WHEN WINTER COMES 
TO MAIN STREET 



xisssfjusiUiummpBr.mi 




GRANT OVERTON 




Class _2E413. 
Book _di_l 



(xpightN?_C;t_ 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



WHEN WINTER COMES 
TO MAIN STREET 

GRANT OVERTON 



WHEN WINTER COMES 
TO MAIN STREET 



BY 



GRANT OVERTON 

AUTHOR OF "THE WOMEN WHO MAKE OUR NOVELS" 



NEW ^ST YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 






COPYRIGHT, 1922, 
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET. I 



Press of 
J. J. Little & Ives Company 
New York, U. S. A. 



NOV 16 '2 (^ 

SCU89Q237C 



FOR 

GEORGE H. DORAN 

WHO HAD THE IDEA 



PREFACE 

I have borrowed my title from two remarkable 
novels. 

If Winter Comes, by A. S. M. Hutchinson, was 
published in the autumn of 1921 by Messrs. 
Little, Brown & Company of Boston. 

Main Street, by Sinclair Lewis, was published 
in the autumn of 1920 by Messrs. Harcourt, 
Brace & Company of New York. 

I have not before me the precise figures of the 
amazing sales of these two books — each passed 
350,000 — but I make my bow to their authors 
and to their publishers and to the American pub- 
lic. I bow to the authors for the quality of their 
work and to the publishers and the public for 
their recognition of that quality. 

These two substantial successes confirm my 
belief that the American public in hundreds of 
thousands relishes good reading. Without that 
belief, this book would not have been prepared; 
but I have prepared it with some confidence that 
those who relish good reading will be interested 
in the chapters that follow. 

As a former book reviewer and literary editor, 
as an author and, now, as one vitally concerned 

[vii] 



PREFACE 

in book publishing, my interest in books has been 
fundamentally unchanging — a wish to see more 
books read and better books to read. 

From one standpoint, When Winter Comes to 
Main Street is frankly an advertisement; it deals 
with Doran books and authors. This is a fact 
of some relevance, however, if, as I believe, the 
reader shall find well-spent the time given to 
these pages. 

Grant Overton. 
ig July IQ22. 



[viii] 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I THE COURAGE OF HUGH WALPOLE 15 

II HALF-SMILES AND GESTURES 33 

III STEWART EDWARD WHITE AND ADVENTURE $$ 

IV WHERE THE PLOT THICKENS 68 
V REBECCA WEST! AN ARTIST 78 

VI SHAMELESS FUN 88 

VII THE VITALITY OF MARY ROBERTS RINEHART 102 

VIII THEY HAVE ONLY THEMSELVES TO BLAME ll8 

IX AUDACIOUS MR. BENNETT I33 

X A CHAPTER FOR CHILDREN 152 

XI cobb's FOURTH dimension 166 

XII PLACES TO GO 187 

XIII ALIAS RICHARD DEHAN 10,6 

XIV WITH FULL DIRECTIONS 212 

XV FRANK SWINNERTON : ANALYST OF LOVERS 22£ 

XVI AN ARMFUL OF NOVELS, WITH NOTES ON 

THE NOVELISTS 1\\ 

XVII THE HETEROGENEOUS MAGIC OF MAUGHAM 270 

[ix] 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XVIII BOOKS WE LIVE BY 293 

XIX ROBERT W. CHAMBERS AND THE WHOLE 

TRUTH 308 

xx uNiguiTiES 321 

XXI THE CONFESSIONS OF A WELL-MEANING 

YOUNG MAN, STEPHEN MCKENNA 334 

XXII POETS AND PLAYWRIGHTS 347 

XXIII THE BOOKMAN FOUNDATION AND THE BOOK- 
MAN 366 

epilogue 372 

index 373 



[x] 



PORTRAITS 

PAGE 

HUGH WALPOLE 17 

STEWART EDWARD WHITE 57 

REBECCA WEST 79 

MARY ROBERTS RINEHART IO3 

ARNOLD BENNETT 135 

IRVIN S. COBB 167 

FRANK SWINNERTON 227 

W, SOMERSET MAUGHAM 27 1 

STEPHEN MCKENNA 335 



WHEN WINTER COMES 
TO MAIN STREET 



WHEN WINTER COMES 
TO MAIN STREET 

Chapter I 
THE COURAGE OF HUGH WALPOLE 



SAYS his American contemporary, Joseph 
Hergesheimer, in an appreciation of Hugh 
Walpole: "Mr. Walpole's courage in the face of 
the widest scepticism is nowhere more daring than 
in The Golden Scarecrow." Mr. Walpole's cour- 
age, I shall always hold, is nowhere more appar- 
ent than in the choice of his birthplace. He was 
born in the Antipodes. Yes! In that magical, 
unpronounceable realm one reads about and in- 
tends to look up in the dictionary. . . . The pre- 
cise Antipodean spot was Auckland, New Zealand, 
and the year was 1884. 

The Right Reverend George Henry Somerset 
Walpole, D.D., Bishop of Edinburgh since 1910, 
had been sent in 1882 to Auckland as Incumbent 
of St. Mary's Pro-Cathedral, and the same ecclesi- 

[15] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

astical fates which took charge of Hugh Seymour 
Walpole's birthplace provided that, at the age of 
five, the immature novelist should be transferred 
to New York. Dr. Walpole spent the next seven 
years in imparting to students of the General The- 
ological Seminary, New York, their knowledge of 
Dogmatic Theology. Hugh Seymour Walpole 
spent the seven years in attaining the age of 
twelve. 

Then, in 1896, the family returned to England. 
Perhaps a tendency to travel had by this time 
become implanted in Hugh, for now, in his late 
thirties, he is one of the most peripatetic of 
writers. He is here, he is there. You write to 
him in London and receive a reply from Cornwall 
or the Continent. And, regularly, he comes over 
to America. Of all the English novelists who 
have visited this country he is easily the most pop- 
ular personally on this side. His visit this autumn 
(1922) will undoubtedly multiply earlier wel- 
comes. 

Interest in Walpole the man and Walpole the 
novelist shows an increasing tendency to become 
identical. It is all very well to say that the man 
is one thing, his books are quite another ; but sup- 
pose the man cannot be separated from his books? 
The Walpole that loved Cornwall as a lad can't 
be dissevered from the "Hugh Seymour" of 
The Golden Scarecrow; without his Red Cross 
service in Russia during the Great War, Walpole 
could not have written The Dark Forest; and I 

[16] 




HUGH WALPOLE 



[17] 



THE COURAGE OF HUGH WALPOLE 

think the new novel he offers us this autumn must 
owe a good deal to direct reminiscence of such a 
cathedral town as Durham, to which the family 
returned when Hugh was twelve. 

The Cathedral, as the new book is called, rests 
the whole of its effect upon just such an edifice 
as young Hugh was familiar with. The Cathedral 
of the story stands in Polchester, in the west of 
England, in the county of Glebeshire — that myth- 
ical yet actual county of Walpole's other novels. 
Like such tales as The Green Mirror and The 
Duchess of Wrexe, the aim is threefold — to give 
a history of a certain group of people and, at the 
same time, (2) to be a comment on English life, 
and, beyond that, (3) to offer a philosophy of life 
itself. 

The innermost of the three circles of interest 
created in this powerful novel — like concentric 
rings formed by dropping stones in water — con- 
cerns the life of Archdeacon Brandon. When the 
story opens he is ruling Polchester, all its life, 
religious and civic and social, with an iron rod. 
A good man, kindly and virtuous and simple, 
power has been too much for him. In the first 
chapter a parallel is made between Brandon and 
a great mediaeval ecclesiastic of the Cathedral, the 
Black Bishop, who came to think of himself as 
God and who was killed by his enemies. All 
through the book this parallel is followed. 

A certain Canon Ronder arrives to take up a 
post in the Cathedral. The main thread of the 

[19] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

novel now emerges as the history of the rivalry 
of these two men, one simple and elemental, the 
other calculating, selfish and sure. Ronder sees 
at once that Brandon is in his way and at once 
begins his work to overthrow the Archdeacon, not 
because he dislikes him at all (he likes him), but 
because he wants his place ; too, because Brandon 
represents the Victorian church, while Ronder is 
on the side of the modernists. 

Brandon is threatened through his son Stephen 
and through his wife. His source of strength, — a 
source of which he is unaware — lies in his daugh- 
ter, Joan, a charming girl just growing up. The 
first part of the novel ends with everything that is 
to follow implicit in what has been told ; the story 
centres in Brandon but more sharply in the Cathe- 
dral, which is depicted as a living organism with 
all its great history behind it working quickly, 
ceaselessly, for its own purposes. Every part of 
the Cathedral life is brought in to effect this, the 
Bishop, the Dean, the Canons — down to the Ver- 
ger's smallest child. All the town life also is 
brought in, from the Cathedral on the hill to the 
mysterious little riverside inn. Behind the town 
is seen the Glebeshire country, behind that, Eng- 
land; behind England, the world, all moving 
toward set purposes. 

The four parts of the novel markedly resemble, 
in structure, acts of a play; in particular, the strik- 
ing third part, entirely concerned with the events 
of a week and full of flashing pictures, such as the 

[20] 



THE COURAGE OF HUGH WALPOLE 

scene of the Town Ball. But the culmination of 
this part, indeed, the climax of the whole book, 
comes in the scene of the Fair, with its atmosphere 
of carnival, its delirium of outdoor mood, and its 
tremendous encounter between Brandon and his 
wife. The novel closes upon a moment both fugi- 
tive and eternal — Brandon watching across the 
fields the Cathedral, lovely and powerful, in the 
evening distance. The Cathedral, lovely and 
powerful, forever victorious, served by the gener- 
ations of men. . . . 



11 



Courage, for Hugh, must have made its demand 
to be exercised early. We have the "Hugh Sey- 
mour" of The Golden Scarecrow who "was sent 
from Ceylon, where his parents lived, to be edu- 
cated in England. His relations having for the 
most part settled in foreign countries, he spent 
his holidays as a minute and pale-faced 'paying 
guest' in various houses where other children were 
of more importance than he, or where children 
as a race were of no importance at all." It would 
be a mistake to confer on such a fictional passage 
a strict autobiographical importance; but I think 
it significant that the novel with which Walpole 
first won an American following, Fortitude, 
should derive from a theme as simple and as 
strong as that of a classic symphony — from those 

[21] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

words with which it opens : " 'T isn't life that 
matters! 'T is the courage you bring to it." 
From that moment on, the novel follows the strug- 
gle of Peter Westcott, in boyhood and young man- 
hood, with antagonists, inner and outer. At the 
end we have him partly defeated, wholly trium- 
phant, still fighting, still pledged to fight. 

Not to confuse fiction with fact : Hugh Wal- 
pole was educated at Kings School, Canterbury, 
and at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. When he 
left the university he drifted into newspaper work 
in London. He also had a brief experience as 
master in a boys' school (the experiential-imagi- 
native source of The Gods and Mr. Perrzn, that 
superb novel of underpaid teachers in a second- 
rate boarding school). The war brought Red 
Cross work in Russia and also a mission to Petro- 
grad to promote pro-Ally sentiment. For these 
services Walpole was decorated with the Georgian 
Medal. 

What is Hugh Walpole like personally*? Ar- 
nold Bennett, in an article which appeared in the 
Book News Monthly and which was reprinted in 
a booklet, says: "About the time of the publica- 
tion of The Gods and Mr. P err in, I made the 
acquaintance of Mr. Walpole and found a man 
of youthful appearance, rather dark, with a spa- 
cious forehead, a very highly sensitised nervous 
organisation, and that reassuring matter-of-fact- 
ness of demeanour which one usually does find in 
an expert. He was then busy at his task of seeing 

[22] 



THE COURAGE OF HUGH WALPOLE 

life in London. He seems to give about one-third 
of the year to the tasting of all the heterogeneous 
sensations which London can provide for the 
connoisseur and two-thirds to the exercise of his 
vocation in some withdrawn spot in Cornwall that 
nobody save a postman or so, and Mr. Walpole, 
has ever beheld. During one month it is impos- 
sible to 'go out' in London without meeting Mr. 
Walpole — and then for a long period he is a mere 
legend of dinner tables. He returns to the dinner 
tables with a novel complete." 

In the same magazine, in an article reprinted 
in the same booklet, Mrs. Belloc Lowndes, that 
excellent weaver of mystery stories and sister of 
Hilaire Belloc, said: "Before all things Hugh 
Walpole is an optimist, with a great love for and 
a great belief in human nature. His outlook is 
essentially sane, essentially normal. He has had 
his reverses and difficulties, living in lodgings in 
remote Chelsea, depending entirely upon his own 
efforts. Tall and strongly built, clean-shaven, 
with a wide, high forehead and kindly sympa- 
thetic expression, the author of Fortitude has a 
refreshing boyishness and zest for enjoyment 
which are pleasant to his close friends. London, 
the home of his adoption, Cornwall, the home of 
his youth, have each an equal spell for him and 
he divides his year roughly into two parts : the tiny 
fishing town of Polperro, Cornwall, and the pleas- 
ure of friendships in London. 'What a wonder- 
ful day!' he was heard to say, his voice sounding 

[23] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

muffled through the thickest variety of a pea-soup 
fog. 'It wouldn't really be London without an 
occasional day like this! I'm off to tramp the 
city.' It is one of Hugh Walpole's superstitions 
that he should always begin his novels on Christ- 
mas Eve. He has always done so, and he believes 
it brings him luck. Often it means the exercise of 
no small measure of self-control, for the story has 
matured in his mind and he is aching to commence 
it. But he vigorously adheres to his custom, and 
by the time he begins to write his book lies before 
him like a map. 'I could tell it you now, prac- 
tically in the very words in which I shall write it/ 
he has said. Nevertheless, he takes infinite trouble 
with the work as it progresses. A great reader, 
Hugh Walpole reads with method. Tracts of his- 
tory, periods of fiction and poetry, are studied 
seriously; and he has a really exhaustive heritage 
of modern poetry and fiction." 

Perhaps since Mrs. Lowndes wrote those words, 
Mr. Walpole has departed from his Christmas 
Eve custom. At any rate, I notice on the last 
page in his very long novel The Captives (the 
work by which, I think, he sets most store of all 
his books so far published) the dates: 

POLPERRO, JAN. I916, 
POLPERRO, MAY I92O. 



[24] 



THE COURAGE OF HUGH WALPOLE 

iii 

The demand for the exercise of that courage of 
which we have spoken can be seen from these fur- 
ther details, supplied by Arnold Bennett : 

"At the age of twenty, as an undergraduate of 
Cambridge, Walpole wrote two novels. One of 
these, a very long book, the author had the im- 
prudence to destroy. The other was The Wooden 
Horse, his first printed novel. It is not to be 
presumed that The Wooden Horse was pub- 
lished at once. For years it waited in manu- 
script until Walpole had become a master 
in a certain provincial school in England. 
There he showed the novel to a fellow-master, 
who, having kept the novel for a period, spoke 
thus : T have tried to read your novel, Walpole, 
but I can't. Whatever else you may be fitted for, 
you aren't fitted to be a novelist.' Mr. Walpole 
was grieved. Perhaps he was unaware, then, that 
a similar experience had happened to Joseph Con- 
rad. I am unable to judge the schoolmaster's fit- 
ness to be a critic, because I have not read The 
Wooden Horse. Walpole once promised to send 
me a copy so that I might come to some conclu- 
sion as to the schoolmaster, but he did not send 
it. Soon after this deplorable incident, Walpole 
met Charles Marriott, a novelist of a remarkable 
distinction. Mr. Marriott did not agree with the 
schoolmaster as to The Wooden Horse, The re- 
sult of the conflict of opinion between Mr. Mar- 

[25] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

riott and the schoolmaster was that Mr. Walpole 
left the school abruptly — perhaps without the ap- 
proval of his family, but certainly with a sum of 
£30 which he had saved. His destination was 
London. 

"In Chelsea he took a room at four shillings a 
week. He was twenty-three and (in theory) a 
professional author at last. Through the favour- 
ing influence of Mr. Marriott he obtained a tempo- 
rary job on the London Standard as a critic of fic- 
tion. It lasted three weeks. Then he got a regu- 
lar situation on the same paper, a situation which 
I think he kept for several years. The Wooden 
Horse was published by a historic firm. Statistics 
are interesting and valuable — The Wooden Horse 
sold seven hundred copies. The author's profits 
therefrom were less than the cost of typewriting 
the novel. History is constantly repeating itself. 

"Mr. Walpole was quite incurable, and he kept 
on writing novels. Maradick at Forty was the 
next one. It sold eleven hundred copies, but with 
no greater net monetary profit to the author than 
the first one. He made, however, a more shining 
profit of glory. Maradick at Forty — as the phrase 
runs — 'attracted attention.' I myself, though in 
a foreign country, heard of it, and registered the 
name of Hugh Walpole as one whose progress 
must be watched." 



[26] 



THE COURAGE OF HUGH WALPOLE 

iv 

Not so long ago there was published in Eng- 
land, in a series of pocket-sized books called the 
Kings Treasuries of Literature (under the gen- 
eral editorship of Sir A. T. Quiller-Couch), a 
small volume called A Hugh Walpole Anthology. 
This consisted of selections from Mr. Walpole's 
novels up to and including The Captives. The 
selection was made by Mr. Walpole himself. 

I think that the six divisions into which the 
selections fell are interesting as giving, in a few 
words, a prospectus of Walpole' s work. The 
titles of the sections were "Some Children," "Men 
and Women," "Some Incidents," "London," 
"Country Places," and "Russia." The excerpts 
under the heading "Some Children" are all from 
Jeremy and The Golden Scarecrow. The "Men 
and Women" are Mr. Perrin and Mrs. Comber, 
from The Gods and Mr. Perrin; Mr. Trenchard 
and Aunt Aggie, from The Green Mirror; and Mr. 
Crashaw, from The Captives. The "Incidents" 
are chosen with an equal felicity — we have the 
theft of an umbrella from The Gods and Mr. Per- 
rin and, out of the same book, the whole passage 
in which Mr. Perrin sees double. There is also a 
scene from Fortitude, "After Defeat." After two 
episodes from The Green Mirror, this portion of 
the anthology is closed with the tragic passage 
from The Captives in which Maggie finds her 
uncle. 

[27] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

Among the London places pictured by Mr. Wal- 
pole in his novels and in this pleasant anthology 
are Fleet Street, Chelsea, Portland Place, The 
Strand, and Marble Arch. The selections under 
the heading "Country Places" are bits about a 
cove, the sea, dusk, a nre and homecoming. The 
passages that relate to Russia are taken, of course, 
from The Dark Forest and The Secret City. 

Not the least interesting thing in this small 
volume is a short introductory note by Joseph Con- 
rad, who speaks of the anthology as "intelligently 
compiled," and as offering, within its limits, a 
sample of literary shade for every reader's sym- 
pathy. "Sophistication," adds Mr. Conrad, "is 
the only shade that does not exist in Mr. Wal- 
pole's prose." He goes on: 

"Of the general soundness of Mr. Walpole's 
work I am perfectly convinced. Let no modern 
and malicious mind take this declaration for a 
left-handed compliment. Mr. Walpole's sound- 
ness is not of conventions but of convictions ; and 
even as to these, let no one suppose that Mr. Wal- 
pole's convictions are old-fashioned. He is dis- 
tinctly a man of his time; and it is just because 
of that modernity, informed by a sane judgment 
of urgent problems and wide and deep sympathy 
with all mankind, that we look forward hopefully 
to the growth and increased importance of his 
work. In his style, so level, so consistent, Mr. 
Hugh Walpole does not seek so much for novel as 
for individual expression; and this search, this 

[28] 



THE COURAGE OF HUGH WALPOLE 

ambition so natural to an artist, is often rewarded 
by success. Old and young interest him alike and 
he treats both with a sure touch and in the kindest 
manner. In each of these passages we see Mr. 
Walpole grappling with the truth of things spir- 
itual and material with his characteristic earnest- 
ness, and in the whole we can discern the charac- 
teristics of this acute and sympathetic explorer 
of human nature : His love of adventure and the 
serious audacity he brings to the task of recording 
the changes of human fate and the moments of 
human emotion, in the quiet backwaters or in the 
tumultuous open streams of existence.' ' 



There is not space here to reprint all of Joseph 
Hergesheimer's Appreciation of Hugh Walpole, 
published in a booklet in 1919 — a booklet still 
obtainable — but I would like to quote a few 
sentences from the close of Mr. Hergesheimer's 
essay, where he says: 

"As a whole, Hugh Walpole's novels maintain 
an impressive unity of expression; they are the 
distinguished presentation of a distinguished 
mind. Singly and in a group, they hold possibili- 
ties of infinite development. This, it seems to 
me, is most clearly marked in their superiority to 
the cheap materialism that has been the insistent 
note of the prevailing optimistic fiction. There 
is a great deal of happiness in Mr. Walpole's 

[29] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

pages, but it is not founded on surface vulgarity 
of appetite. The drama of his books is not sapped 
by the automatic security of invulnerable heroics. 
Accidents happen, tragic and humorous; the life 
of his novels is checked in black and white, often 
shrouded in grey; the sun moves and stars come 
out; youth grows old; charm fades; girls may or 
may not be pretty; his old women 

"But there he is inimitable. The old gentle- 
women, or caretakers, dry and twisted, brittle and 
sharp, repositories of emotion — vanities and mal- 
ice and self-seeking — like echoes of the past, or 
fat and loquacious, with alcoholic sentimentality, 
are wonderfully ingratiating. They gather like 
shadows, ghosts, about the feet of the young, and 
provide Mr. Walpole with one of his main re- 
sources — the restless turning away of the young 
from the conventions, prejudices and inhibitions 
of yesterday. He is singularly intent upon the in- 
justice of locking age about the wrists of youth; 
and, with him, youth is very apt to escape, to defy 
authority set in years . . . only to become, in 
time, age itself." 

Perhaps this is an anti-climax: The Univer- 
sity of Edinburgh has twice awarded the Tait 
Black Prize for the best novel of the year to Mr. 
Walpole — first for The Secret City in 1919 and 
then for The Captives in 1920. 



[30] 



THE COURAGE OF HUGH WALPOLE 

Books 
by Hugh Walpole 

Novels: 

THE WOODEN HORSE 

THE GODS AND MR. PERRIN 

(In England, mr. perrin and mr. traill) 

THE GREEN MIRROR 
THE DARK FOREST 
THE SECRET CITY 
THE CAPTIVES 
THE CATHEDRAL 

Romances: 

MARADICK AT FORTY 

THE PRELUDE TO ADVENTURE 

FORTITUDE 

THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 

THE YOUNG ENCHANTED 

Short Stories: 

THE GOLDEN SCARECROW- 
JEREMY 
THE THIRTEEN TRAVELLERS 

Belles-Lettres: 

Joseph conrad — A Critical Study. 

Sources 
on Hugh Walpole 

Hugh Walpole: An Appreciation, by Joseph 
Hergesheimer, george h. doran company. 

[31] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

English Literature During the Last Half Century, 
by J. W. Cunliffe, the macmillan company. 

A Hugh Walpole Anthology, selected by the au- 
thor. LONDON! J. M. DENT & SONS. NEW YORK! 
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY. 

Hugh Walpole, Master Novelist. Pamphlet pub- 
lished by GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY. (Out 

of print.) 
Who's Who [In England]. 



[32] 



Chapter II 
HALF-SMILES AND GESTURES 



HALF-SMILES and gestures ! There is always 
a younger generation but it is not always 
articulate. The war may not have changed the 
face of the world, but it changed the faces of very 
many young men. Faces of naive enthusiasm 
and an innocent expectancy were not particularly 
noticeable in the years 1918 to 1922. The som- 
breness, the abruptness, the savage mood evident 
in the writings of such men as Barbusse and Sieg- 
fried Sassoon were abandoned. Confronted with 
the riddle of life, spared the enigma of death, the 
young men have felt nothing more befitting their 
age and generation than the personal "gesture." 

If you ask me what is a gesture, I can't say that 
I know. It is something felt in the attitude of a 
person to whom one is talking or whose book one 
is reading. And the gesture is accompanied, in 
some of our younger writers, with an expression 
that is both serious and smiling. These half- 
smiles are, I take it, youth's comment on the rid- 
dle of a continued existence, on the loss of well- 

[33] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

lost illusions, on the uncertainty of all future 
values. What is there worth trying for? It is 
not too clear, hence the gesture. What is there 
worth the expenditure of emotion? It is doubt- 
ful ; and a half-smile is the best. 

Such a writer, busily experimenting in several 
directions, is Aldous Huxley. This child of 
1894, the son of Leonard Huxley (eldest son and 
biographer of Prof. T. H. Huxley) and Julia 
Arnold (niece of Martha Arnold and sister of 
Mrs. Humphry Ward), has with three books of 
prose built up a considerable and devoted follow- 
ing of American readers. First there was Limbo. 
Then came Crome Yellow, and on the heels of 
that we had the five stories — if you like to call 
them so — composing Mortal Coils. I have seen 
no comment more penetrating than that of 
Michael Sadleir, himself the author of a novel 
of distinction. Sadleir says: 

"Already Huxley is the most readable of his 
generation. He has the allurement of his own in- 
consistency, and the inconsistency of youth is its 
questing spirit, and, consequently, its chief claim 
to respect. 

"At present there are several Huxleys — the 
artificer in words, the amateur of garbage, pierrot 
lunaire, the cynic in rag-time, the fastidious sen- 
sualist. For my part, I believe only in the last, 
taking that to be the real Huxley and the rest 
prank, virtuosity, and, most of all, self -conscious- 
ness. As the foal will shy at his own shadow, so 

[34] 



HALF-SMILES AND GESTURES 

Aldous Huxley, nervous by fits at the poise of his 
own reality, sidesteps with graceful violence into 
the opposite of himself. There is a beautiful ex- 
ample of this in Mortal Coils. Among the stage- 
directions to his play, 'Permutations Among the 
Nightingales,' occur the following sentences: 
'Sydney Dolphin has a romantic appearance. His 
two volumes of verse have been recognised by 
intelligent critics as remarkable. How far they 
are poetry nobody, least of all Dolphin himself, is 
certain. They may be merely the ingenious prod- 
ucts of a very cultured and elaborate brain/ 

"The point is not that these words might be 
applied to the author himself, but rather that he 
knows they might, even hopes they will, and has 
sought to lull his too-ready self-criticism by, so to 
speak, getting there first and putting down on 
paper what he imagines others may think or write 
of him. 

"Huxley is a poet and writer of prose. His 
varied personalities show themselves in both. The 
artificer in words is almost omnipresent, and God 
forbid that he ever vanish utterly. The disciple 
of Laforgue has produced lovely and skilful 
things, and one is grateful for the study of the 
French symbolists that instigated the translation 
of 'L'Apres-midi d'un Faune.' In The Walk' the 
recapture of Laforgue's blend of the exotic and 
the everyday is astonishingly complete. 

"The cynic is as accomplished as the Pierrot 
and 'Social Amenities,' parts of 'Soles Occidere 

[35] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

et Redire Possunt,' and, in Limbo , 'Richard 
Greenow' (first 100 pages) and 'Happy Families' 
are syncopated actuality, and the mind jigs an 
appreciative shoulder, as the body jerks irresist- 
ibly to Tndianola.' 

"There remains Huxley the sensualist, a very 
ardent lover of beauty, but one that shrinks from 
the sordid preamble of modern gallantry, one that 
is apprehensive of the inevitable disillusionment. 
As others have done, as others will do, he finds in 
imagination the adventure that progress has de- 
creed unseemly. 

"The reader who is shocked by 'slabby-bellies,' 
'mucus,' 'Priapulids' ; the reader who is awed by 
the paraded learning of 'Splendour by Numbers,' 
by the deliberate intricacy of 'Beauty,' or the deli- 
cate fatigue of 'The Death of Lully' in Limbo — 
these are no audience for an artist. It tickles the 
author's fancy, stretches his wits, flatters his dev- 
iltry to provoke and witness such consternation 
and such respect. But the process is waste of time, 
and a writer of Huxley's quality, whatever his 
youth, has never time to waste." 

ii 

Readers who have chuckled over Guinea Girl 
or have read with the peculiar delight of discov- 
ery The Pilgrim of a Smile are astonished to learn 
that its author is, properly speaking, an engineer. 
Norman Davey, born in 1888 (Cambridge 1908- 

[36] 



HALF-SMILES AND GESTURES 

10) is the son of Henry Davey, an engineer of 
eminence. After taking honours in chemistry and 
physics, Norman Davey travelled in America 
(1911), particularly in Virginia and Carolina. 
Then he went to serve as an apprentice in engi- 
neering work in the North of England and to 
study in the University of Montpellier in France. 

His first book was The Gas Turbine, published 
in London and now a classic on its subject. In 
the four years preceding the war he contributed 
articles on thermodynamics to scientific papers. 
It is only honest to add that at the same time he 
contributed to Punch and Life — chiefly verse. 

After the war he had a book of verse published 
in England and followed it with The Pilgrim of 
a Smile. He has travelled a good deal in Spain, 
Italy, Sweden, and his hobby is book collecting. 
This is all very well ; and it explains how he could 
provide the necessary atmosphere for that laugh- 
able story of Monte Carlo, Guinea Girl; but one 
is scarcely prepared for The Pilgrim of a Smile 
by those preliminaries in thermodynamics — or in 
Punch. The story of the man who did not ask 
the Sphinx for love or fame or money but for the 
reason of her smile is one of the most intelligible 
of the gestures characteristic of literature since 
the war. 

iii 

The gesture as such is perhaps most definitely 
recognised in the charming book by John Dos 

[37] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

Passos, Rosinante to the Road Again. This, in- 
deed, is the story of a gesture and a quest for it. 
The gesture is that of Castile, denned in the open- 
ing chapter in some memorable words exchanged 
by Telemachus and his friend Lyseus : 

" Tt's the gesture that's so overpowering; don't 
you feel it in your arms? Something sudden and 
tremendously muscular/ 

" 'When Belmonte turned his back suddenly on 
the bull and walked away dragging the red cloak 
on the ground behind him I felt it,' said Lyceus. 

" That gesture, a yellow flame against maroon 
and purple cadences ... an instant swagger of 
defiance in the midst of a litany to death the all- 
powerful. That is Spain . . . Castile at any 
rate.' 

" Ts "swagger" the right word?' 

"'Find a better." 

" Tor the gesture a mediaeval knight made 
when he threw his mailed glove at his enemy's 
feet or a rose in his lady's window, that a mule- 
driver makes when he tosses off a glass of aguard- 
iente, that Pastora Imperio makes dancing . . .' ' 

I do not know whether one should classify 
Rosinante as a book of travel, a book of essays, a 
book of criticisms. It is all three — an integrated 
gesture. Certain interspersed chapters purport to 
relate the wayside conversations of Telemachus 
and Lyseus — dual phases of the author's person- 
ality shall we say? — and the people they meet. 
The other chapters are acute studies of modern 

[38] 



HALF-SMILES AND GESTURES 

Spain, with rather special attention to modern 
Spanish writers. One varies in his admiration 
between such an essay as that on Miguel de 
Unamuno and such an unforgettable picture as 
the vision of Jorge Manrique composing his splen- 
did ode to Death : 

"It had been raining. Lights rippled red and 
orange and yellow and green on the clean paving- 
stones. A cold wind off the Sierra shrilled through 
clattering streets. As they walked the other man 
was telling how this Castilian nobleman, courtier, 
man-at-arms, had shut himself up when his fa- 
ther, the Master of Santiago, died, and had 
written this poem, created this tremendous 
rhythm of death sweeping like a wind over the 
world. He had never written anything else. 
They thought of him in the court of his great dust- 
coloured mansion at Ocafia, where the broad eaves 
were full of a cooing of pigeons and the wide 
halls had dark rafters painted with arabesques in 
vermilion, in a suit of black velvet, writing at a 
table under a lemon tree. Down the sun-scarred 
street, in the cathedral that was building in those 
days, full of a smell of scaffolding and stone dust, 
there must have stood a tremendous catafalque 
where lay with his arms around him the Master 
of Santiago; in the carved seats of the choirs the 
stout canons intoned an endless growling litany; 
at the sacristy door, the flare of the candles flash- 
ing occasionally on the jewels of his mitre, the 
bishop fingered his crosier restlessly, asking his 

[39] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

favourite choir-boy from time to time why Don 
Jorge had not arrived. And messengers must have 
come running to Don Jorge, telling him the serv- 
ice was at the point of beginning, and he must 
have waved them away with a grave gesture of a 
long white hand, while in his mind the distant 
sound of chanting, the jingle of the silver bit of 
his roan horse stamping nervously where he was 
tied to a twined Moorish column, memories of 
cavalcades filing with braying of trumpets and 
flutter of crimson damask into conquered towns, 
of court ladies dancing and the noise of pigeons 
in the eaves drew together like strings plucked in 
succession on a guitar into a great wave of rhythm 
in which his life was sucked away into this one 
poem in praise of death." 



IV 

The Column is an American institution. What 
is meant, of course, is that daily vertical discus- 
sion of Things That Have Interested Me by dif- 
ferent individuals attached to different papers and 
having in common only the great gift of being 
interested in what interests everybody else. Per- 
haps that is not right, either. Maybe the gift is 
that of being able to interest everybody else in 
the things you are interested in. Of all those who 
write a Column, Hey wood Broun is possibly the 
one whose interests are the most varied. It is 
precisely this variety which makes his book 

[4°] 



HALF-SMILES AND GESTURES 

Pieces of Hate: and Other Enthusiasms unique as 
a collection of essays. He will write on one page 
about the boxing ring, on the next about the thea- 
tre, a little farther along about books, farther on 
yet about politics. He makes excursions into col- 
lege sports, horse racing and questions of fair 
play; and the problems of child-rearing are his 
constant preoccupation. 

Consider some of his topics. We have an 
opening study of the literary masterpiece of E. M. 
Hull, the novel celebrating the adventures of Miss 
Diana Mayo and the Sheik Ahmed Ben Hassan. 
The next chapter deals with Hans Christian 
Andersen and literary and dramatic critics. 
Pretty soon we are discussing after-dinner 
speeches, Babe Ruth and Jack Dempsey. If this 
is a gesture, all I can say is, it is a pinwheel ; and 
yet Broun writes only about things he knows 
about. Lest you think from my description that 
Pieces of Hate is a book in a wholly unserious 
vein, I invite you to read the little story, "Frank- 
incense and Myrrh." 

"Once there were three kings in the East and 
they were wise men. They read the heavens and 
they saw a certain strange star by which they knew 
that in a distant land the King of the World was 
to be born. The star beckoned to them and they 
made preparations for a long journey. 

"From their palaces they gathered rich gifts, 
gold and frankincense and myrrh. Great sacks 
of precious stuffs were loaded upon the backs of 

[41] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

the camels which were to bear them on their jour- 
ney. Everything was in readiness, but one of the 
wise men seemed perplexed and would not come 
at once to join his two companions who were 
eager and impatient to be on their way in the 
direction indicated by the star. 

"They were old, these two kings, and the other 
wise man was young. When they asked him he 
could not tell why he waited. He knew that his 
treasuries had been ransacked for rich gifts for the 
King of Kings. It seemed that there was nothing 
more which he could give, and yet he was not con- 
tent. 

"He made no answer to the old men who 
shouted to him that the time had come. The 
camels were impatient and swayed and snarled. 
The shadows across the desert grew longer. And 
still the young king sat and thought deeply. 

"At length he smiled, and he ordered his serv- 
ants to open the great treasure sack upon the back 
of the first of his camels. Then he went into a 
high chamber to which he had not been since he 
was a child. He rummaged about and presently 
came out and approached the caravan. In his 
hand he carried something which glinted in the 
sun. 

"The kings thought that he bore some new gift 
more rare and precious than any which they had 
been able to find in all their treasure rooms. They 
bent down to see, and even the camel drivers 
peered from the backs of the great beasts to find 

[42] 



HALF-SMILES AND GESTURES 

out what it was which gleamed in the sun. They 
were curious about this last gift for which all the 
caravan had waited. 

"And the young king took a toy from his hand 
and placed it upon the sand. It was a dog of 
tin, painted white and speckled with black spots. 
Great patches of paint had worn away and left 
the metal clear, and that was why the toy shone 
in the sun as if it had been silver. 

"The youngest of the wise men turned a key in 
the side of the little black and white dog and then 
he stepped aside so that the kings and the camel 
drivers could see. The dog leaped high in the air 
and turned a somersault. He turned another and 
another and then fell over upon his side and lay 
there with a set and painted grin upon his face. 

"A child, the son of a camel driver, laughed and 
clapped his hands, but the kings were stern. 
They rebuked the youngest of the wise men and 
he paid no attention but called to his chief serv- 
ant to make the first of all the camels kneel. Then 
he picked up the toy of tin and, opening the treas- 
ure sack, placed his last gift with his own hands 
in the mouth of the sack so that it rested safely 
upon the soft bags of incense. 

" 'What folly has seized you*?' cried the eldest 
of the wise men. 'Is this a gift to bear to the 
King of Kings in the far country ?' 

"And the young man answered and said: Tor 
the King of Kings there are gifts of great rich- 
ness, gold and frankincense and myrrh. 

[43] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

" 'But this,' he said, 'is for the child in Beth- 
lehem !'" 



Editor of the London Mercury, J. C. Squire has 
the light touch of the columnist but limits himself 
somewhat more closely to books and the subjects 
suggested by them. Very few men living can 
write about books with more actual and less ap- 
parent erudition than Mr. Squire. Born in 1884, 
educated at Cambridge, an editor of the New 
Statesman, a poet unsurpassed in the field of 
parody but a poet who sets more store by his seri- 
ous verse, Mr. Squire can best be appreciated by 
those who have just that desultory interest in 
literature which he himself possesses. I have 
been looking through his Books in General, Third 
Series, for something quotable, and I declare I 
cannot lift anything from its setting. It is all of 
a piece, from the essay on "If One Were De- 
scended from Shakespeare" to the remarks about 
Ben Jonson, Maeterlinck, Ruskin, Cecil Chester- 
ton and Mr. Kipling's later verse (which I have 
nowhere seen more sensibly discussed). 

Well, perhaps these observations from the chap- 
ter "A Terrifying Collection" will give the taste ! 
It appears that an anonymous donor had offered 
money to the Birmingham Reference Library to 
pay for the gathering of a complete collection of 
the war poetry issued in the British Empire. 

[44] 



HALF-SMILES AND GESTURES 

After some preliminary comment, Mr. Squire con- 
cludes : 

"If that donor really means business I shall be 
prepared to supply him with one or two rare and 
special examples myself. I possess tributes to the 
English effort written by Portuguese, Japanese 
and Belgians; and paeans by Englishmen which 
excel, as regards both simplicity of sentiment and 
illiteracy of construction, any foreign composi- 
tion. Birmingham is not noted for very many 
things. It is, we know, the only large city in the 
country which remains solidly Tory in election 
after election. It produced, we know, Mr. Joseph 
and Mr. Austen Chamberlain. It has, we know, 
something like a monopoly in the manufacture of 
the gods in wood and brass to which (in his blind- 
ness) the heathen bows down; and there are all 
sorts of cheap lines in which it can give the whole 
world points and a beating. But it has not yet 
got the conspicuous position of Manchester or 
Liverpool; and one feels that the enterprise of 
this anonymous donor may help to put it on a 
level with those towns. For, granted that its 
librarians take their commission seriously, and its 
friends give them the utmost assistance in their 
power, there seems every reason to suppose that 
within the next year the City of Birmingham will 
be the proud possessor of the largest mound of 
villainously bad literature in the English-speaking 
world. Pilgrims will go to see it who on no other 
account would have gone to Birmingham; his- 

[45] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

torians will refer to it when endeavouring to prove 
that their own ages are superior to ours in intelli- 
gence; authors will inspect it when seeking the 
consoling assurance that far, far worse things 
than they have ever done have got into public 
libraries and been seriously catalogued. The en- 
terprise, in fact, is likely to be of service to sev- 
eral classes of our fellow-citizens; and it cannot, 
as far as I am able to see, do harm to any. It 
should therefore be encouraged, and I recommend 
anyone who has volumes of war-verse which he 
wishes to get rid of to send them off at once to the 
Chief Librarian of Birmingham." 

Oh, yes ! Books in General, Third Series, is by 
Solomon Eagle. Mr. Squire explains that the pen 
name Solomon Eagle has no excuse. The original 
bearer of the name was a poor maniac who, during 
the Great Plague of London, used to run naked 
through the streets with a pan of coals of fire on 
his head crying, ' 'Repent, repent." 

Too late I realise my wrongdoing, for what, 
after all, is Books in General as compared to Mr. 
Squire's Life and Letters? As a divertissement, 
compared to a tone poem; as a curtain-raiser to 
a three-act play. Life and Letters, though not 
lacking in the lighter touches of Mr. Squire's 
fancy, contains chapters on Keats, Jane Austen, 
Anatole France, Walt Whitman, Pope and Rabe- 
lais of that more considered character one expects 
from the editor of the London Mercury. This is 
not to say that these studies are devoid of humour ; 

[46] 



HALF-SMILES AND GESTURES 

and those chapters in the volume which are in the 
nature of interludes are among the best Mr. 
Squire has written. Unfortunately I have left 
myself no room to quote the incomparable pane- 
gyric (in the chapter on "Initials") to the name 
of John. Read it, if your name is John; you will 
thank me for bringing it to your attention. 



VI 

One expects personality in the daughter of 
Margot Asquith, and the readers of the first book 
by Princess Antoine Bibesco (Elizabeth Asquith) 
were not disappointed. The same distinction and 
the same unusual personality will be found in her 
new book, Balloons. Princess Bibesco' s / Have 
Only Myself to Blame consisted of sixteen short 
stories the most nervously alive and most clearly 
individualised of feminine gestures. The quality 
of Princess Bibesco's work, in so far as purely de- 
scriptive passages can convey it, may be realised 
from these portraits of a father and mother which 
open the story called "Pilgrimage" in I Have 
Only Myself to Blame: 

"My father was one of the most brilliant men 
I have ever known but as he refused to choose any 
of the ordinary paths of mental activity his name 
has remained a family name when it should have 
become more exclusively his own. If anything, 
my mother's famous beauty cast far more lustre 
on it than his genius — which preferred to bask 

[47] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

in the sunshine of intimacy or recline indolently 
in the shady backwaters of privacy and leisure. 
And yet in a way he was an adventurer — or rather 
an adventurous scientist. He was often cal]ed 
cynical but that was not true — he was far too 
dispassionate, too little of a sentimentalist to be 
tempted by inverted sentimentalism. Above all 
things he was a collector — a collector of impres- 
sions. His psychological bibelots were not for 
everyone. Some, indeed, lay open in the vitime 
of his everyday conversation but many more lay 
hidden in drawers opened only for the elect. 

"Undoubtedly, in a way, my mother was one 
of his masterpieces. Her beauty seemed to be 
enhanced by every hour and every season. At 
forty suddenly her hair had gone snow white. 
The primrose, the daffodil, the flame, the gold, the 
black, the emerald, the ruby of her youth gave 
way to grey and silver, pale jade and faint tur- 
quoise, shell pink and dim lavender. Her loveli- 
ness had shifted. The hours of the day conspired 
to set her. The hard coat and skirt, the high col- 
lar, the small hat, the neat veil of morning, the 
caressing charmeuse that followed, the trailing 
chiffon mysteries of her tea-gown, the white velvet 
or the cloth of silver that launched her trium- 
phantly at night, who was to choose between 
them 4 ? Summer and winter followed suit. 
Whether you saw her emerging from crisp or- 
gandy or clinging crepe de chine, stiff grey as- 
trakan or melting chinchilla always it was the 

[48] 



HALF-SMILES AND GESTURES 

same. This moment you said to yourself, 'She has 
reached the climax of her loveliness.' 

"My father delighted in perfection. He had 
discovered it in her and promptly made it his own. 
I don't know if he ever regretted the unreliable 
quality of her emptiness. Rather I think it 
amused him to see the violent passions she in- 
spired, to hear her low thrilling voice weigh down 
her meaningless murmurs with significance. To 
many of her victims the very incompleteness of 
her sentences was a form of divine loyalty. One 
young poet had described her soul as a fluttering, 
desperate bird beating its wings on the bars of her 
marvellous loveliness. At this her lazy smile 
looked very wise. She thought my father an ideal 
husband. He was always right about her clothes 
and after all he was the greatest living expert 
on her beauty. Obviously he loved her but — well, 
he didn't love her inconveniently." 



vn 

There will be some who remember reading a 
first novel, published several years ago, called 
Responsibility. This was a study from a Samuel 
Butleresque standpoint of the attitude of a father 
toward an illegitimate son. At least, that is what 
it came to in the end; but there were leisurely 
earlier pages dealing with such subjects as the tire- 
someness of Honest Work and the dishonesty of 
righteous people. Very good they were, too. 

[49] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

James E. Agate was the author of this decidedly 
interesting piece of fiction. He was not a partic- 
ularly young man, being in his early forties; but 
he was a youngish man. He was youngish in the 
sense that Mr. Wells and Mr. Bennett are young- 
ish, and not in the sense of Sir James Peter Pan 
Barrie — incapable of growing up. As dramatic 
critic for the Saturday Review, London, Agate 
has been much happier than in a former experi- 
ence on the Cotton Exchange of Manchester, his 
native city. "Each week," said The Londoner in 
The Bookman, recently, "he watches over the 
theatre with an enthusiasm for the drama which 
must constantly be receiving disagreeable shocks. 
He is a man full of schemes, so that the title of 
his new book is distinctly appropriate." That 
new book is called Alarums and Excursions. 

"Agate is not peaceable," continues our inform- 
ant. "He carries his full energy, which is 
astounding, into each topic that arises. He seizes 
it. Woe betide the man who dismisses an idol of 
his. It is not to be done. He will submit to no 
man, however great that man's prestige may be. 
He is the bulldog." 

Agate is a critic "still vigorous enough and 
fresh enough to attack and to destroy shams of 
every kind. This is what Agate does in Alarums 
and Excursions." 

Bright news is it that Agate is writing a new 
novel "on the Balzacian scale of Responsibility." 

[50] 



HALF-SMILES AND GESTURES 

viii 

It was in 1918, when I was exploring new 
books for a New York book section, that there 
came to hand a volume called Walking-Stick 
Papers. Therein I found such stuff as this: 

"And so the fish reporter enters upon the last 
lap of his rounds. Through, perhaps, the narrow, 
crooked lane of Pine Street he passes, to come out 
at length upon a scene set for a sea tale. Here 
would a lad, heir to vast estates in Virginia, be 
kidnapped and smuggled aboard to be sold a slave 
in Africa. This is Front Street. A white ship lies 
at the foot of it. Cranes rise at her side. Tugs, 
belching smoke, bob beyond. All about are an- 
cient warehouses, redolent of the Thames, with 
steep roofs and sometimes stairs outside, and with 
tall shutters, a crescent-shaped hole in each. 
There is a dealer in weather-vanes. Other things 
dealt in hereabout are these : Chronometers, 'nau- 
tical instruments,' wax guns, cordage and twine, 
marine paints, cotton wool and waste, turpentine, 
oils, greases, and rosin. Queer old taverns, pub- 
lic houses, are here, too. Why do not their win- 
dows rattle with a * Yo, ho, ho' ? 

"There is an old, old house whose business 
has been fish oil within the memory of men. And 
here is another. Next, through Water Street, one 
comes in search of the last word on salt fish. Now 
the air is filled with gorgeous smell of roasting 
coffee. Tea, coffee, sugar, rice, spices, bags and 

[51] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

bagging here have their home. And there are 
haughty bonded warehouses filled with fine li- 
quors. From his white cabin at the top of a ven- 
erable structure comes the dean of the salt-fish 
business. 'Export trade fair/ he says; 'good de- 
mand from South America.' " 

The whole book was like that. I remember 
saying and printing: 

"If this isn't individualised writing, extremely 
skilful writing and highly entertaining writing, 
we would like to know what is." 

But what was that in the general chorus of 
delighted praise that went up all over the coun- 
try? — and there were persons of discrimination 
among the laudators of Robert Cortes Holliday. 
People like James Huneker and Simeon Strunsky, 
who praised not lightly, were quick to express their 
admiration of this new essayist. 

Four years have gone adding to Holliday' s 
first book volumes in the same class and singularly 
unmistakeable in their authorship. They are the 
sort of essays that could not be anonymous once 
the authorship of one of them was known. We 
have, now, Broome Street Straws and the pocket 
mirror, Peeps at People, We have Men and 
Books and Cities and we have a score of pleasant 
Turns About Town. 

Holliday shows no sign of failing us. I think 
the truth is that he is one of those persons de- 
scribed somewhere by Wilson Follett; I think 
Follett was trying to convey the quality of 

[52] 



HALF-SMILES AND GESTURES 

De Morgan. Follett said that with Dickens and 
De Morgan it was not a question of separate 
books, singly achieved, but a mere matter of cut- 
ting off another liberal length of the rich person- 
ality which was Dickens or De Morgan. So, 
exactly, it seems to me in the case of Holliday. 
A new book of Holliday's essays is simply another 
few yards of a personality not precisely matched 
among contemporary American essayists. Holli- 
day's interests are somewhat broader, more 
human and perhaps more humane, more varied 
and closer to the normal human spirit and taste 
and fancy than are the interests of essayists like 
Samuel Crothers and Agnes Repplier. 

The measure of Holliday as an author is not, of 
course, bounded by these collections of essays. 
There is his penetrating study of Booth Tarking- 
ton and the fine collected edition of Joyce Kilmer, 
Joyce Kilmer; Poems, Essays and Letters With a 
Memoir by Robert Cortes Holliday. 



IX 

A gesture can be very graceful, sometimes. A 
half-smile can be wistful and worth remembering. 
That was a pleasant story, almost too slender 
structurally to be called a novel, by Gilbert W. 
Gabriel, published in the spring of 1922. Jiminy 
is a tale of the quest of the perfect love story by 
Benjamin Benvenuto and Jiminy, maker of small 
rhymes. The author, music critic of The Sun, 

[53] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

New York, had long been known as a newspaper 
writer and a pinch hitter for Don Marquis, con- 
ductor of The Sun's famous column, The Sun 
Dial, when Don was A. W. O. L. 



[54] 



Chapter III 

STEWART EDWARD WHITE AND 
ADVENTURE 



STEWART EDWARD WHITE," says 
George Gordon in his book The Men Who 
Make Our Novels, "writes out of a vast self-made 
experience, draws his characters from a wide 
acquaintance with men, recalls situations and in- 
cidents through years of forest tramping, hunting, 
exploring in Africa and the less visited places of 
our continent, for the differing occasions of his 
books. In his boyhood he spent a great part of 
each year in lumber camps and on the river. He 
first found print with a series of articles on birds, 
'The Birds of Mackinac Island' (he was born in 
Grand Rapids, March 12, 1873), brought out in 
pamphlet form by the Ornithologists' Union and 
since (perforce) referred to as his 'first book.' In 
the height of the gold rush he set out for the Black 
Hills, to return East broke and to write The Claim 
Jumpers and The Westerners. He followed 
Roosevelt into Africa, The Land of Footprints 
and of Simba. He has, more recently, seen serv- 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

ice in France as a Major in the U. S. Field Artil- 
lery. Though (certainly) no Ishmael, he has for 
years been a wanderer upon the face of the earth, 
observant and curious of the arresting and strange 
— and his novels and short stories mark a journey 
such as but few have gone upon, a trailing of rain- 
bows, a search for gold beyond the further hills 
and a finding of those campfires (left behind when 
Mr. Kipling's Explorer crossed the ranges beyond 
the edge of cultivation) round which the resolute 
sit to swap lies while the tenderfoot makes a fair 
— and forced — pretence at belief." 



11 

Spring, 1922, having advanced to that stage 
where one could feel confidence that summer 
would follow — a confidence one cannot always 
feel in March — a short letter came from Mr. 
White. He enclosed two photographs. One of 
them showed a trim-looking man with eyeglasses 
and moustache, sitting shirt-sleeved in a frail- 
looking craft. The letter explained that this was 
a collapsible canvas boat. My deduction was that 
the picture had been taken before the boat col- 
lapsed. 

There was also a picture of another and much 
sturdier boat. I think the name Seattle was 
painted on her stern. She lay on a calm surface 
that stretched off to a background of towering 
mountains — Lake Louise Inlet. The much stur- 

[56] 




STEWART EDWARD WHITE 



[57] 



STEWART EDWARD WHITE 

dier boat, I understood, was also the property of 
S. E. White. 

The letter made all these things very clear. 
It said: "Fifteen tons, fifty feet, sleeps five, 
thirty-seven horsepower, heavy duty engine, built 
sea-going, speed nine knots. No phonograph! 
No wine cellar. 

"We are going north, that is all the plans we 
have. We two are all there are on board, though 
we are thinking of getting a cat. On second 
thought, here is the crew in the canvas boat we 
carry to the inland lakes to fish from. Her name 
is the W reckless; be careful how you spell it." 

As stated, the crew in the about-to-collapse 
boat was Stewart Edward White. On his way 
north it was his intention to revise what will be, 
in his judgment, the most important novel he has 
written. But I must not say anything about that 
yet. Let me say something, rather, about his new 
book which you who read this have a more im- 
mediate prospect of enjoying. On Tiptoe: A Ro- 
mance of the Redwoods is Stewart Edward White 
in a somewhat unusual but entirely taking role. 
Here we have Mr. White writing what is essen- 
tially a comedy; and yet there is an element of 
fantasy in the story which, in the light of a few 
opening and closing paragraphs, can be taken 
seriously, too. 

The story sounds, in an outline, almost baldly 
implausible. Here are certain people, including 
a young woman, the daughter of a captain of in- 

[59] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

dustry, stranded in the redwoods. Here is a 
young man out of nowhere, who foretells the 
weather in a way that is uncannily verified soon 
afterward. Here also is the astonishing engine 
which the young man has brought with him out 
of nowhere, — an engine likely to revolutionise 
the affairs of the world. . . . 

I suppose that the secret of such a story as On 
Tiptoe lies entirely in the telling. I know that 
when I heard it outlined, the thing seemed to me 
to be preposterous. But then, while still under 
the conviction of this preposterousness, ,the story 
itself came to my hand and I began to read. Its 
preposterousness did not worry me any longer. It 
had, besides a plausibility more than sufficient, a 
narrative charm and a whimsical humour that 
would have justified any tale. The thing that 
links On Tiptoe with Stewart Edward White is 
the perfect picture of the redwoods — the feeling 
of all outdoors you get while under the spell of the 
story. I do not think there is any doubt that all 
lovers of White will enjoy this venture into the 
field of light romance. 



in 

Stewart Edward White was the son of T. 
Stewart White and Mary E. (Daniell) White. 
He received the degree of bachelor of philosophy 
from the University of Michigan in 1895 and the 
degree of master of arts from the same institution 

[60] 



STEWART EDWARD WHITE 

in 1903 (Who's Who in America: Volume 12). 
He attended Columbia Law School in 1896-97. 
He married on April 28, 1904, Elizabeth Grant 
of Newport, Rhode Island. He was a major with 
the 144th Field Artillery in 1917-18. He lives in 
California. But these skeletal details, all right 
for Who's Who in America, serve our purpose 
poorly. I am going to try to picture the man from 
two accounts of him written by friends. One 
appeared as an appendix to White's novel Gold, 
published in 1913, and was written by Eugene F. 
Saxton. The other is a short newspaper article 
by John Palmer Gavit (long with the New York 
Evening Post) printed in the Philadelphia Ledger 
for May 20, 1922. 

Mr. Saxton had a talk with White a few days 
before White sailed from New York for his sec- 
ond African exploring expedition. Saxton had 
asked the novelist if he did not think it possible 
to lay hold of the hearts and imaginations of a 
great public through a novel which had no love 
interest in it; if "man pitted against nature was 
not, after all, the eternal drama." 

White thought for a moment and then said : 
"In the main, that is correct. Only I should 
say that the one great drama is that of the indi- 
vidual man's struggles toward perfect adjustment 
with his environment. According as he comes 
into correspondence and harmony with his en- 
vironment, by that much does he succeed. That 
is what an environment is for. It may be finan'' 

[61] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

cial, natural, sexual, political, and so on. The 
sex element is important, of course, — very im- 
portant. But it is not the only element by any 
means; nor is it necessarily an element that exer- 
cises an instant influence on the great drama. Any 
one who so depicts it is violating the truth. Other 
elements of the great drama are as important — 
self-preservation, for example, is a very simple 
and even more important instinct than that of the 
propagation of the race. Properly presented, 
these other elements, being essentially vital, are 
of as much interest to the great public as the rela- 
tion of the sexes." 

The first eight or nine years of Mr. White's 
life were spent in a small mill town. Michigan 
was at that time the greatest of lumber states. 
White was still a boy when the family moved to 
Grand Rapids, then a city of about 30,000. 
Stewart Edward White did not go to school until 
he was sixteen, but then he entered the third year 
high with boys of his own age and was graduated 
at eighteen, president of his class. He won and, I 
believe, still holds the five-mile running record 
of the school. 

The explanation is that the eight or ten years 
which most boys spend in grammar school were 
spent by Stewart Edward continually in the 
woods and among the rivermen, in his own town 
and in the lumber camps to which his father took 
him. Then there was a stretch of four years, from 
about the age of twelve on, when he was in Call- 

[62] 



STEWART EDWARD WHITE 

fornia, as he says "a very new sort of a place." 
These days were spent largely in the saddle and 
he saw a good deal of the old California ranch 
life. 

"The Birds of Mackinac Island," already re- 
ferred to, was only one of thirty or forty papers 
on birds which White wrote in his youth for 
scientific publications. Six or seven hundred 
skins that he acquired are now preserved in the 
Kent Scientific Museum of Grand Rapids. 

His summer vacations while he was in college 
were spent cruising the Great Lakes in a 28-foot 
cutter sloop. After graduating he spent six 
months in a packing-house at $6 a week. His 
adventure in the Black Hills gold rush followed. 

It was during his studies at Columbia that 
White wrote, as part of his class work, a story 
called "A Man and His Dog" which Brander 
Matthews urged him to try to sell. Short Stories 
brought it for $15 and subsequent stories sold also. 
One brought as much as $35 ! 

He tried working in McClurg's bookstore in 
Chicago at $9 a week. Then he set out for Hud- 
son Bay. The Claim Jumpers, finished about 
this time, was brought out as a book and was well 
received. The turn or tne tide did not come until 
Munsey paid $500 for the serial right in The 
Westerners. White was paid in five dollar bills 
and he Zuys that when he stuffed the money in his 
pockets he left at once for fear someone would 
change his mind and want all that money back. 

[63] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

The Blazed Trail was written in a lumber camp 
in the depth of a northern winter. The only- 
hours White could spare for writing were in the 
early morning, so he would begin at 4 A. M., 
and write until 8 A. M., then put on his snow- 
shoes and go out for a day's lumbering. The story 
finished, he gave it to Jack Boyd, the foreman, to 
read. Boyd began it after supper one evening and 
when White awoke the next morning at four 
o'clock he found the foreman still at it. As Boyd 
never even read a newspaper, White regarded this 
as a triumph. This is the book that an English- 
woman, entering a book shop where White hap- 
pened to be, asked for in these words : "Have you 
a copy of Blase Tales?" 

White went out hastily in order not to overhear 
her cries of disappointment. 



IV 



Mr. Saxton asked White why he went to Africa 
and White said : 

"My answer to that is pretty general. I went 
because I wanted to. About once in so often the 
wheels get rusty and I have to get up and do some- 
thing real or else blow up. Africa seemed to me 
a pretty real thing. Before I went I read at least 
twenty books about it and yet I got no mental 
image of what I was going to see. That fact ac- 
counts for these books of mine. I have tried to 

[64] 



STEWART EDWARD WHITE 

tell in plain words what an ordinary person would 
see there. 

"Let me add," he went on, "that I did not go 
for material. I never go anywhere for material ; 
if I did I should not get it. That attitude of mind 
would give me merely externals, which are not 
worth writing about. I go places merely because, 
for one reason or another, they attract me. Then, 
if it happens that I get close enough to the life, 
I may later find that I have something to write 
about. A man rarely writes anything convincing 
unless he has lived the life; not with his critical 
faculty alert; but whole-heartedly and because, 
for the time being, it is his life." 



John Palmer Gavit tells how once, when hunt- 
ing, White broke his leg and had to drag himself 
back long miles to camp alone: 

"Adventure enough, you'd say. But along the 
way a partridge drummed and nothing would do 
but he must digress a hundred yards from the 
shorter and sufficiently painful way, brace him- 
self for the shot and recoil, kill the bird and have 
his dog retrieve it, and bring his game along with 
him. Just to show himself that this impossible 
thing could be done. 

"I am not imagining when I say that in this 
same spirit Stewart Edward White faces the 
deeper problems and speculations of life. He 

[65] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

wants to know about things here and hereafter. 
With the same zest and simplicity of motive he 
faces the secret doors of existence; not to prove 
or disprove, but to see and find out. And when 
he comes to the Last Door he will go through with- 
out fear, with eyes open to see in the next undis- 
covered country what there is to be seen and to 
show that the heart of a brave and unshrinking 
man, truthful and open-handed and friendly, is 
at home there, as he may be anywhere under God's 
jurisdiction." 

Books 
by Stewart Edward White 

THE WESTERNERS 
THE CLAIM JUMPERS 
THE BLAZED TRAIL 

conjuror's HOUSE 

THE FOREST 
THE MAGIC FOREST 
THE SILENT PLACES 
THE MOUNTAIN 
BLAZED TRAIL STORIES 
THE PASS 

the mystery (With Samuel Hopkins Adams) 

ARIZONA NIGHTS 

CAMP AND TRAIL 

THE RIVERMAN 

THE RULES OF THE GAME 

THE CABIN 

[66] 



STEWART EDWARD WHITE 

THE ADVENTURES OF BOBBY ORDE 

THE LAND OF FOOTPRINTS 

AFRICAN CAMP FIRES 

GOLD 

THE REDISCOVERED COUNTRY 

THE GREY DAWN 

THE LEOPARD WOMAN 

SIMBA 

the forty-niners (In The Chronicles of America 
Series) 

THE ROSE DAWN 

THE KILLER, AND OTHER STORIES 

ON tiptoe: A ROMANCE OF THE REDWOODS 

Sources 
on Stewart Edward White 

The Men Who Make our Novels, by George 
Gordon, moffat, yard & company. 

Who's Who in America. 

Stewart Edward White: Appendix to gold (pub- 
lished in 1913) by Eugene F. Saxton. 

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY. 

Stewart Edward White, by John Palmer Gavit. 

PHILADELPHIA PUBLIC LEDGER, May 20, 
1922. 



[67] 



Chapter IV 
WHERE THE PLOT THICKENS 



SCARCELY anyone is there, now writing 
mystery stories, who, with the combination 
of ingenuity — or perhaps I should say originality 
— dependableness, and a sufficient atmosphere 
comes up to the high and steady level of Frank L. 
Packard. Born in Montreal in 1877 of American 
parents, a graduate of McGill University and a 
student of Liege, Belgium, Mr. Packard was en- 
gaged in engineering work for some years and be- 
gan writing for a number of magazines in 1906. 
He now lives at Lachine, Province of Quebec, 
Canada, and the roll of his books is a considerable 
one. In that roll, there are titles known and en- 
thusiastically remembered by nearly every reader 
of the mystery tale. Is there anyone who has not 
heard of The Miracle Man or The Wire Devils or 
Jimmie Dale in The Adventures of Jimmie Dale 
and The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale? 
The Night Operator, From Now On, Fawned, 
and, most recently, Doors of the Night have had 
their public ready and waiting. That same public 
[68] 



WHERE THE PLOT THICKENS 

will denude the book counters of Jimmie Dale 
and The Phantom Clue this autumn. 

Packard differs from his fellow-writers of mys- 
tery stories in his flair for the unusual idea. In 
Pawned each character finds himself in pawn to 
another, and must act as someone else dictates. 
Doors of the Night is the account of a man who 
was both a notorious leader and hunted prey of 
New York's underworld. From Now On is the 
unexpected story of a man after he comes out of 
prison ; and Jimmie Dale, Fifth Avenue clubman, 
was, to Clancy, Smarlinghue the dope fiend; to 
the gang, Larry the Bat, stool pigeon; but to 
Headquarters — the Grey Seal ! 

Stories of the underworld are among the most 
difficult to write. The thing had, it seemed, been 
done to death and underdone and overdone when 
Packard came along. In all seriousness, it may 
be said that Packard has restored the underworld 
to respectability — as a domain for fictional pur- 
poses at least ! It is not that his crooks are real 
crooks — though they are — but that he is able to 
put life into them, to make them seem human. 
No man is a hero to his valet and no crook can be 
merely a crook in a story of the underworld that is 
intended to convey any sense of actuality. Beside 
the distortions and conventionalisations of most 
underworld stories, Packard's novels stand out 
with distinctiveness and a persistent vitality. 



[69] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

ii 

When a book called Bulldog Drummond was 
published there was no one prescient of the great 
success of the play which would be made from 
the story. But those Who read mystery stories 
habitually knew well that a mystery-builder of 
exceptional adroitness had arrived. Of course, 
Cyril McNeile, under the pen name "Sapper," 
was already somewhat known in America by sev- 
eral war books; but Bulldog Drummond was a 
novelty. Apparently it was possible to write a 
first rate detective-mystery story with touches of 
crisp humour as good as Pelham Grenville Wode- 
house's stuff! There is something convincing 
about the hero of Bulldog Drummond, the brisk 
and cheerful young man whom demobilisation has 
left unemployed and whose perfectly natural sus- 
ceptibility to the attractiveness of a young woman 
leads him into adventures as desperate as any in 
No Man's Land. 

For Cyril McNeile's new story The Black 
Gang, after the experience of Bulldog Drummond 
as a book and play, Americans will be better pre- 
pared. An intermediate book, The Man in Rat- 
catcher, consists of shorter stories which exhibit 
very perfectly McNeile's gift for the dramatic 
situation. He gives us the man who returned 
from the dead to save his sweetheart from de- 
struction ; the man who staked his happiness on a 
half forgotten waltz; the man who played at cards 

[70] 



WHERE THE PLOT THICKENS 

for his wife; the man who assisted at suicide. 
Neither ordinary short stories nor ordinary 
motifs! I should hesitate to predict how far 
McNeile will go along this special line of his; 
but I see no reason why he should not give us the 
successor of Sherlock Holmes. 



in 

Black Casar's Clan is the good title of Albert 
Payson Terhune's new story in succession to his 
Black Gold, a mystery story that was distin- 
guished by the possession of a Foreword so un- 
usual as to be worth reprinting — one of the best 
arguments for this type of book ever penned : 

"If you are questing for character-study or for 
realism or for true literature in any of its forms, — 
then walk around this book of mine (and, indeed, 
any book of mine) ; for it was not written for you 
and it will have no appeal for you. 

"But if you care for a yarn with lots of action, 
— some of it pretty exciting, — you may like Black 
Gold. I think you will. 

"It has all the grand old tricks: from the 
Weirdly Vanishing Footprints, to the venerable 
Ride for Life. Yes, and it embalms even the half- 
forgotten and long-disused Struggle on the Cliff. 
Its Hero is a hero. Its Villain is a villain. No- 
body could possibly mistake either of them for the 
Friend of the Family. The Heroine is just a 
heroine; not a human. There is not a subtle 

[71] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

phrase or a disturbingly new thought, from start 
to finish. 

"There is a good mystery, too; along lines 
which have not been worked over-often. And 
there is a glimpse of Untold Treasure. What bet- 
ter can you ask; in a story that is frank melo- 
drama 4 ? 

"The scene, by the way, is laid in Northern 
California ; a beautiful and strikingly individual- 
istic region which, for the most part, is ignored 
by tourists for the man-made scenic effects and 
playgrounds of the southern counties of the 
State. 

"If, now and again, my puppets or my plot- 
wires creak a bit noisily, — what then *? Creaking, 
at worst, is a sure indication of movement, — of 
action, — of incessant progress of sorts. A thing 
that creaks is not standing still and gathering 
mildew. It moves. Otherwise it could not 
creak. 

"Yes, there are worse faults to a plot than an 
occasional tendency to creakiness. It means, for 
one thing, that numberless skippable pages are not 
consumed in photographic description of the ill- 
assorted furnishings of the heroine's room or 
cosmos; nor in setting forth the myriad phases of 
thought undergone by the hero in seeking to check 
the sway of his pet complexes. (This drearily 
flippant slur on realism springs from pure envy. 
I should rejoice to write such a book. But I 
can't. And, if I could, I know I should never be 

[72] 



WHERE THE PLOT THICKENS 

able to stay awake long enough to correct its 
proofs.) 

"Yet, there is something to be said in behalf 
of the man or woman who finds guilty joy in 
reading a story whose action gallops; a story 
whose runaway pace breaks its stride only to leap 
a chasm or for a breathcatching stumble on a 
precipice-edge. The office boy prefers Captain 
Kidd to Strindberg; not because he is a boy, but 
because he is human and has not yet learned the 
trick of disingenuousness. He is still normal. 
So is the average grown-up. 

"These normal and excitement-loving readers 
are overwhelmingly in the majority. Witness the 
fact that The Bat had a longer run in New York 
than have all of Dunsany's and Yeats' s rare 
dramas, put together. If we insist that our coun- 
try be guided by majority- rule, then why sneer at 
a majority-report in literary tastes? 

"Ben Hur was branded as a 'religious dime 
novel.' Yet it has had fifty times the general 
vogue of Anatole France's pseudo-blasphemy 
which deals with the same period. Public taste 
is not always, necessarily, bad taste. 'The com- 
mon people heard Him, gladly.' (The Scribes did 
not.) 

"After all, there is nothing especially debasing 
in a taste for yarns which drip with mystery and 
suspense and ceaseless action; even if the style 
and concept of these yarns be grossly lacking in 
certain approved elements. So the tale be written 

[73] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

with strong evidence of sincerity and with a dash 
of enthusiasm, why grudge it a small place of its 
own in readers' hours of mental laziness? 

"With this shambling apology, — which, really, 
is no apology at all, — I lay my book on your 
knees. You may like it or you may not. You 
will find it alive with flaws. But, it is alive. 

"I don't think it will bore you. Perhaps there 
are worse recommendations." 



IV 

Hulbert Footner does not look like a writer of 
mystery stories. A tall, handsome, well-dressed, 
extremely courteous gentleman who, had he the 
requisite accent, might just have arrived from 
Bond Street. He has a trim moustache. Awfully 
attractive blue eyes! He lives on a farm at 
Sollers, Maryland. No one else, it seems, is so 
familiar with the unusual corners of New York 
City, the sort of places that get themselves called 
"quaint." No one else manages the affairs of 
young lovers (on paper) with quite so much of 
the airy spirit of young love. I can think of no 
one else who could write such a scene as that in 
The Owl Taxi, where the dead-wagon, on its way 
in the night to the vast cemetery in a New York 
suburb, is held up for the removal of a much- 
needed corpse. Such material is bizarre. The 
handling of it must be very deft or the result 
will be revolting; and yet the thing can be done, 

[74] 



WHERE THE PLOT THICKENS 

In the latter part of that excellent play, Seven 
Keys to Baldpate, George M. Cohan and his 
company bandied a corpse from attic to cellar of 
a country house. This preposterous scene as pre- 
sented on the stage was helplessly laughable. Mr. 
Footner's scene in The Owl Taxi is like that. 

The man has a special gift for the picturesque 
person. I do not know whether he uses originals ; 
if I suspect an original for old Simon Deaves in 
The Deaves Affair, I get no farther than a faint 
suspicion that . . . No, I cannot identify his 
character. (Not that I want to; I am not a victim 
of that fatal obsession which fastens itself upon 
so many readers of fiction — the desire to identify 
the characters in a story with someone in real life. 
The idea is ridiculous.) Mr. Footner knows 
Greenwich Village. He knows outlying stretches 
in the greater city of New York ; he knows excur- 
sion boats such as the Ernestina, whose cruises 
play so curious a part in The Deaves Affair. I 
have a whetted appetite for what Footner will 
give us next; I feel sure it will be like no other 
story of the season. A great deal to be sure of ! 



The peculiarity about Gold-Killer is the mys- 
tery behind the excellent mystery of the book. I 
mean, of course, the mystery of its authorship. I 
do not any longer believe that the book is the work 
of Siamese twins — in a physiological sense of the 

[75] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

word "twins." I know that there is no John Pros- 
per — or, rather, that if there is a John Prosper, he 
is not the author of Gold-Killer. Yet the book 
was the work of more than one man. Were two 
intellects siamesed to write the story? Those 
who, in my opinion, know the facts point to the 
name on the title page and say that John is John 
and Prosper is Prosper and never the twain shall 
meet, unless for the purpose of evolving a super- 
G old-Killer. Whether they will be able to sur- 
pass this book, which opens with a murder at the 
opera and finishes (practically) with a nose dive 
in an airplane, is beyond my surmise. 

If they will try, I give them my word I will read 
the new yarn. 

Mrs. Baillie Reynolds's latest novel is called 
The Judgment of Charis. It is not a story to tell 
too much about in advance. I will say that 
Charis had run away from an all-too-persistent 
lover and an all-too-gorgeous family, and had 
been taken under the wing of a kindly, middle- 
aged millionaire and invited to become his secre- 
tary. She expected some complications and in her 
expectations she was not disappointed; and the 
readers' expectations will not be disappointed 
either, though they may find the ending unex- 
pected. 

The Vanishing of Betty Varian restored to 
readers of Carolyn Wells a detective whose ap- 
pearance in The Room with the Tassels made that 
story more than ordinarily worth while. I do not 

[76] 



WHERE THE PLOT THICKENS 

know, though, whether Penny Wise would be in- 
teresting or even notable if it were not for his 
curious assistant, Zizi. The merit of detective 
stories is necessarily variable; The Vanishing of 
Betty Varian is one of the author's best; but Miss 
Wells (really Mrs. Hadwin Houghton) is, to me, 
as extraordinary as her stories. All those books ! 
She herself says that "having mastered the psy- 
chology of detachment" she can write with more 
concentration and less revision than any other pro- 
fessional writer of her acquaintance. Yes, but 

how No doubt it is too much to expect her 

to explain how she is ingenious. 

Mrs. Belloc Lowndes, sister of Hilaire Belloc, 
is ingenious in a different direction. Her story 
of What Tim my Did was one that attracted espe- 
cial attention from those periodicals and persons 
interested in psychic matters. Here was a woman 
whose husband had died from poison — self-admin- 
istered, the coroner decided — and here was little 
Timmy, who knew that something was wrong. 
Animals also knew it; and then one day Timmy 
saw at her heels a shadow man, stiff and military, 
and behind him a phantom dog. Mrs. Lowndes's 
gifts, different from her distinguished brother's, 
are none the less gifts. 



[77] 



Chapter V 
REBECCA WEST: AN ARTIST 



WIETHER Rebecca West is writing re- 
views of books or dramatic criticism or 
novels she is an artist, above everything. I have 
been reading delightedly the pages of her new 
novel, The Judge, It is Miss West's second novel. 
One is somewhat prepared for it by the excellence 
of her first, The Return of the Soldier, published 
in 1918. Somewhat, but not adequately. 

Perhaps I am prejudiced. You see, I have been 
in Edinburgh, and though it was the worst season 
of the year — the period when, as Robert Louis 
Stevenson says, that Northern city has "the vilest 
climate under Heaven" — nevertheless, the charm 
and dignity of that old town captured me at the 
very moment when a penetrating Scotch winter 
rain was coming in direct contact with my bones. 
I was, I might as well confess, soaked and chilled 
as no New York winter snowstorm ever wetted 
and chilled me. It did not matter; here was the 
long sweep of Princes Street with its gay shops on 
one side and its deep valley on the other; acros* 

[78] 




REBECCA WEST 



[79] 



REBECCA WEST: AN ARTIST 

the valley the tenements of the Royal Mile lifted 
themselves up — the Royal Mile, which runs al- 
ways uphill from the Palace that is Holyrood to 
the height that is the Castle. Talk about ges- 
tures ! The whole city of Edinburgh is a match- 
less gesture. 

And so, when I began the first page of The 
Judge, it was a grand delight to find myself back 
in the city of the East Wind : 

"It was not because life was not good enough 
that Ellen Melville was crying as she sat by the 
window. The world, indeed, even so much of it 
as could be seen from her window, was extrava- 
gantly beautiful. The office of Mr. Mactavish 
James, Writer to the Signet, was in one of those 
decent grey streets that lie high on the Northward 
slope of Edinburgh New Town, and Ellen was 
looking up the sidestreet that opened just opposite 
and revealed, menacing as the rattle of spears, 
the black rock and bastions of the Castle against 
the white beamless glare of the southern sky. 
And it was the hour of the clear Edinburgh twi- 
light, that strange time when the world seems to 
have forgotten the sun though it keeps its colour; 
it could still be seen that the moss between the 
cobblestones was a wet bright green, and that a 
red autumn had been busy with the wind-nipped 
trees, yet these things were not gay, but cold and 
remote as brightness might be on the bed of a 
deep stream, fathoms beneath the visitation of the 
sun. At this time all the town was ghostly, and 

[81] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

she loved it so. She took her mind by the arm 
and marched it up and down among the sights of 
Edinburgh, telling it that to be weeping with dis- 
content in such a place was a scandalous turning 
up of the nose at good mercies. Now the Castle 
Esplanade, that all day had proudly supported 
the harsh virile sounds and colours of the drilling 
regiments, would show to the slums its blank sur- 
face, bleached bonewhite by the winds that raced 
above the city smoke. Now the Cowgate and the 
Canongate would be given over to the drama of 
the disorderly night, the slumdwellers would fore- 
gather about the rotting doors of dead men's man- 
sions and brawl among the not less brawling 
ghosts of a past that here never speaks of peace, 
but only of blood and argument. And Holyrood, 
under a black bank surmounted by a low bitten 
cliff, would lie like the camp of an invading and 
terrified army. . . ." 



11 

The Judge is certainly autobiographical in 
some of the material employed. For instance, it 
is a fact that Miss West went to school in Edin- 
burgh, attending an institution not unlike John 
Thompson's Ladies College referred to in The 
Judge (but only referred to). It is a fact, as every- 
one who knows anything about Miss West knows, 
that Miss West was an ardent suffragette in that 
time before suffragettes had ceased from troubling 

[82] 



REBECCA WEST: AN ARTIST 

and Prime Ministers were at rest. An amazing 
legend got about some time ago that Rebecca 
West's real name was Regina Miriam Bloch. 
Then on the strength of the erring "Readers' 
Guide to Periodical Literature" did Miss Amy 
Wellington write a sprightly article for the Liter- 
ary Review of the New York Evening Post. Miss 
Wellington referred to this mysterious Regina 
Miriam Bloch who had stunned everybody by her 
early articles written under the name of one of 
Ibsen's most formidable heroines; but unfortun- 
ately Miss West wrote a letter in disclaimer. She 
cannot help Mr. Ibsen. It may be a collision in 
names, but it is not a collusion. The truth about 
Rebecca West, who has written The Judge, seems 
to be dependably derivable from the English 
Who's Who, a standard work always worth con- 
sulting. This estimable authority says that Re- 
becca West was born on Christmas in 1892, and 
is the youngest daughter of the late Charles Fair- 
field of County Kerry. It further says that she 
was educated at George Watson's Ladies' College, 
Edinburgh. It states that she joined the staff of 
The Free woman as a reviewer in 191 1. Her club 
is the International Women's Franchise. Her 
residence is 36 Queen's Gate Terrace, London 
S. W. 7. Her telephone is Kensington 7285. 

Now is there anything mythical left*? What 
excuse, O everybody, is there any longer for the 
legend of Regina Miriam Bloch 4 ? 

But I do not believe Miss West objects to leg- 

[83] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

ends. I imagine she loves them. The legend of 
a name is perhaps unimportant; the legend of a 
personality is of the highest importance. That 
Miss West has a personality is evident to anyone 
familiar with her work. A personality, however, 
is not three-dimensionally revealed except in that 
form of work which comes closest to the heart and 
life of the worker. To write pungent and terri- 
fyingly sane criticisms is a notable thing; but to 
write novels of tender insight and intimate revela- 
tion is a far more convincing thing. The Judge is 
such a novel. 



111 

There is a prefatory sentence, as follows : 
"Every mother is a Judge who sentences the 
children for the sins of the father." 
There is a dedication. It is: 

TO THE MEMORY OF MY MOTHER 

The Judge is a study of the claim of a mother 
upon her son. The circumstances of Mrs. Yaver- 
land's life were such as peculiarly to strengthen 
the tie between her and Richard. On the other 
hand, she had always disliked and even hated 
her son Roger. 

The first part of the book, however, does not 
bring in Richard Yaverland's mother. It is a pic- 
ture of Ellen Melville, the girl in Edinburgh, the 

[84] 



REBECCA WEST: AN ARTIST 

girl whose craving for the colour of existence has 
gone unsatisfied until Richard Yaverland enters 
her life. Yaverland, with his stories of Spain, 
and his imaginative appeal for that young girl, 
is the fulcrum of Ellen Melville's destiny. 

That destiny, carried by the forces of human 
character to its strange termination, is handled by 
Miss West in a long novel the chapters of which 
are a series of delineative emotions. I do not 
mean that Miss West shrinks from externalised 
action, as did Henry James whom she has ad- 
mired and studied. She perceives the immense 
value of introspection, but is not lost in its quick- 
sands. She can devote a whole chapter to a train 
of thought in the mind of Ellen Melville, sitting 
inattentively at a public meeting; and she can 
follow it with another long chapter giving the se- 
quence of thoughts in the mind of Richard Yaver- 
land; and she can bring each chapter to a period 
with the words: "She (he) glanced across the 
hall. Their eyes met." It might be thought that 
this constitutes a waste of narrative space ; not so. 
As a matter of fact, without the insight accorded 
by these disclosures of things thought and felt, 
we should be unable to understand the behaviour 
of these two young people. 

All the first half of the book is a truly marvel- 
ous story of young lovers ; all the latter end of the 
book is a relation scarcely paralleled in fiction of 
the conflict between the mother's claim and the 
claim of the younger woman. 

[85] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

Of subsidiary portraits there are plenty. El- 
len's mother and Mr. Mactavish James and Mr. 
Philip James are like full-lengths by Velasquez. 
In the closing chapters of the book we have the 
extraordinary figure of the brother and son, Roger, 
accompanied by the depressing girl whom he has 
picked up the Lord knows where. 

And, after all, this is not a first novel — that 
promise, which so often fails of fulfilment — but a 
second novel ; and I have in many a day not read 
anything that seemed to me to get deeper into the 
secrets of life than this study of a man who, at the 
last, spoke triumphantly, "as if he had found a 
hidden staircase out of destiny," and a woman 
who, at the last, "knew that though life at its 
beginning was lovely as a corn of wheat it was 
ground down to flour that must make bitter bread 
between two human tendencies, the insane sexual 
caprice of men, the not less mad excessive stead- 
fastness of women." 

Books 
by Rebecca West 

THE RETURN OF THE SOLDIER 
THE JUDGE 



[86] 



REBECCA WEST: AN ARTIST 

Sources 
on Rebecca West 

Who's Who. [In England]. 

Rebecca West: Article by Amy Wellington in the 

LITERARY REVIEW OF THE NEW YORK EVE- 
NING POST, 1921. 

Articles by Rebecca West in various English pub- 
lications, frequently reprinted by the living 
age. See the readers' guide to periodical 
literature. 



f87] 



Chapter VI 
SHAMELESS FUN 



ONE way to write about Nina Wilcox 
Putnam would be in the way she writes 
about everything. It's not so hard. As thus: 

Some dull day in the office. We look up and 
whom should we see standing right there before 
us but Nina Wilcox Putnam ! Falling over back- 
wards, that being what our swivel chair is made 
for, we say: "Well, well, well! So today is 
May 3, 1922! Where from? West Broadway?' 

"I should not say so! South Broadway, I 
guess. I've just motored up from Florida. But 
your speaking of West Broadway reminds me: 
I've written a piece for George Lorimer of Sat- 
urday Evening Post. You see my book, West 
Broadway^ brought me so many letters my arm 
ached from answering them. What car did you 
drive? Where d'y' get gas in the desert? What's 
the best route? And thus et cetera. So now I 
have wrote me a slender essay answering every- 
thing that anybody can ask on this or other trans- 
continental subjects. Mr. Lorimer will publish, 
[88] 



SHAMELESS FUN 

and who knows — as they say in fiction — it might 
make a book afterward." 

"How's Florida V 

"I left it fine, if it doesn't get in trouble while 
I'm away. I've bought a ranch, for fruit only, on 
the East Coast, between Palm Beach and Miami, 
but not paying these expensive prices, no, not 
never. And I shall live there for better but not 
for worse, for richer, but most positively not for 
poorer. I pick my own alligator pears off my own 
tree unless I want to sell them for fifteen cents 
on the tree. Bathing, one-half mile east by 
motor." 

"Been reading your piece, 'How I Have Got So 
Far So Good,' in John Siddall's American Maga- 
zine." 

"Yes, I thought I would join the autobiogra- 
phists — Benvenuto Cellini, Margot Asquith, 
Benjamin Franklin, et Al, as Ring Lardner would 
insist. Do you know Ring? He and I are going 
to have one of these amicable literary duels soon, 
like the famous Isn't That Just Like a Man? OA, 
Well, You Know How Women Are! which Mrs. 
Rinehart and Irvin Cobb fought to a finish. But 
speaking of sport, I have discovered my grandest 
favourite sport, in spite of motoring, which is deep 
sea fishing, nothing less. Let me inform you that 
I landed a 9-pound dolphin which he is like fire- 
opals all over and will grace the wall of my din- 
ing-room no matter if all my friends suffer with 
him the rest of their lives. He was a male dol- 

[89] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

phin; get that! It makes a difference from the 
deep sea fishing sportsman's standpoint. And this 
place of mine at the end of South Broadway where 
I can roll cocoanuts the rest of my life if I want 
to is at, in or about Delray, Florida. D-e-1-r-a-y; 
you've spelled it." 

"We're publishing your new book on how to 
get thin, Tomorrow We Diet' 9 

"Oh, yes. Well, I am several laps ahead of 
that. Now, I am going up to my home in Madi- 
son, Connecticut, to work. Later, I'll maybe drive 
out to Yellowstone Park or some place. Well, I 
might stay here at the Brevoort for a month ; run 
down to Philadelphia, maybe. Did you know I 
once wrote a book for children that has sold 
500,000 copies? And, besides a young son whom 
I am capable of entertaining if you'll let him tell 
you, I have a few ideas. . . ." 

Hold on! This isn't so easy as it looked. 

Probably Nina Wilcox Putnam is inimitable. 
This one and that may steal Ring W. Lardner's 
stuff, but there is a sort of Yale lock effect about 
the slang (American slanguage) in such books as 
West Broadway which is not picked so easily. As 
for the new Nina Wilcox Putnam novel, Laugh- 
ter Limited — if you don't believe what we say 
about N.W.P. inimitableness just open that book 
and see for yourself. The story of a movie 
actress*? Yes, and considerable more. Just as 
West Broadway was a great deal more than an 
amusing story, being actually the best hunch 

[90] 



SHAMELESS FUN 

extant on transcontinental motoring, outside of 
the automobile blue books, which are not nearly 
such good reading. 

And then there's Tomorrow We Diet, in which 
Nina Wilcox Putnam tells how she reduced fifty 
pounds in seven months without exercising any- 
thing but her intelligence. But if you want to 
know about Nina Wilcox Putnam, read her story 
in her own words that appeared in the American 
Magazine for May, 1922. Here is a bit of it: 

"Believe you me, considering the fact that they 
are mostly men, which it would hardly be right 
to hold that up against them, Editors in my ex- 
perience has been an unusually fine race, and it is 
my contracts with them has made me what I am 
today, I'm sure I'm satisfied. And when a fellow 
or sister writer commences hollering about how 
Editors in America don't know anything about 
what is style or English, well anyways not enough 
to publish it when they see it, why all I can say is 
that I could show them living proof to the con- 
trary, only modesty and good manners forbids me 
pointing, even at myself. I am also sure that the 
checks these hollerers have received from said 
Editors is more apt to read the Editor regrets 
than pay to the order of, if you get what I mean. 

"Well, I have had it pretty soft, I will admit, 
because all the work I done to get where I am, is 
never over eight hours a day penal servitude, 
locked up in my study and fighting against only 
such minor odds and intrusions as please may I 

[91] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

have a dollar and a quarter for the laundry, or 
now dear you have been writing long enough, I 
have brought you a nice cup of tea, just when I 
am going strong on a important third chapter. 
But my work is of course not really work since it 
is done in the home, as my relations often remind 
me. At least they did until I got George, that's 
my pres. husband, and he never lets me be inter- 
rupted unless he wants to interrupt me himself for 
a clean collar or something. 

"Also besides working these short hours, four 
of which is generally what us authors calls straight 
creative work, I have it soft in another way. I 
got a pretty good market for my stuff and always 
had, and this of course has got me so's I can draw 
checks as neat and quick as anybody in the family 
and they love to see me do it. 

"All kidding to one side it is the straight dope 
when I say that from being merely the daughter 
of honest and only moderately poor parents I have 
now a house of my own, the very one in our town 
which I most admired as a child; and the quit- 
claim deed come out of my own easy money. I 
also got a car or two — and a few pieces of the 
sort of second-hand stuff which successful people 
generally commence cluttering up their house 
with as a sign of outward and visible success. I 
mean the junk one moves in when one moves the 
golden oak out. . . . 

"I never commenced going over really big until 
it was up to me to make good every time I deliv- 

[92] 



SHAMELESS FUN 

ered, and this was not until my husband died and 
left me with a small son, which I may say in 
passing, that I consider he is the best thing I have 
ever published. Well, there I was, a widow with 
a child, and no visible means of support except 
when I looked into the mirror. Of course, before 
then I had been earning good money, but only 
when I wanted something, or felt like it. Now I 
had to want to feel like it three hundred and sixty- 
five days a year. 

"I'll tell the world it was some jolt." 



11 

Perfect Behaviour is the calmly confident title 
of the new book by Donald Ogden Stewart — a 
work which will rejoice the readers of A Parody 
Outline of History. Behaviour is the great ob- 
stacle to happiness. One may overcome all the 
ordinary complexes. One may kill his cousins and 
get his nephews and nieces deported, and refuse 
to perform Honest Work — yet remain a hopeless 
slave to the Book of Etiquette. In a Pullman 
car, with a ticket for the lower berth, he will take 
the seat facing backward, only to tremble and 
blush with shame on learning his social error. 
Who has not suffered the mortification of picking 
up the fork that was on the floor and then finding 
out afterward that it was the function of the 
waiter to pick up the fork? What is a girl to do 
if, escorted home at night from the dance, she 

[93] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

finds the hour is rather late and yet her folks are 
still up? Whether she should invite the young 
man in or ask him to call again, she is sure to do 
the wrong thing. Then there are those wedding 
days, the proudest and happiest of a girl's life, 
when she slips her hand into the arm of the wrong 
man or otherwise gives herself away before she is 
given away. Tragedy lurks in such trifles. Don 
Stewart, who has suffered countless mortifications 
and heartbreaks from just such little things as 
these, determined that something shall be done to 
spare others his own unfortunate experiences. 

Perfect Behaviour is the result of his brave 
determination. It is a book that will be con- 
stantly in demand until society is abolished. 
Then, too, there is that new behaviouristic psy- 
chology. You have not heard of that? I can 
only assure you that Mr. Stewart's great work is 
founded upon all the most recent principles of 
behaviouristic psychology. Noted scientists will 
undoubtedly endorse it. You will endorse it 
yourself, and you will be able to cash in on it. 

Stewart wrote A Parody Outline of History 
for The Bookman. When the idea was broached, 
John Farrar, editor of The Bookman, was about 
the only person who saw the possibilities. Re- 
sponse to the Parody Outline of History was im- 
mediate, spontaneous and unanimous. When the 
chapters appeared as a book, this magnificent take- 
off of contemporary American writers as well as 
of H. G. Wells leaped at once into the place of a 

[94] 



SHAMELESS FUN 

best seller. It remains one. The thing that it 
accomplished is not likely to be well done again 
for years. 

iii 

Neither Here Nor There is the title of a new 
book by Oliver Herford, author of This Giddy 
Globe. 

I do not know which is funnier, Herford or his 
books. Among the unforgotten occasions was one 
when he was in the Doran office talking about a 
forthcoming book and nibbling on animal crackers. 
Suddenly he stopped nibbling and exclaimed with 
a gasp of dismay : 

"Good heavens! I've been eating the illus- 
trations for my book." 



IV 

Timothy Tubby* s Journal is, of course, the 
diary of the famous British novelist with notes by 
Theresa Tubby, his wife. Tubby, on his visit to 
this side, was remarkably observant. He says : 

"How weary we were after a few hours of being 
interviewed and photographed! This deep ap- 
preciation on the part of the American people 
was touching, but exhausting. Yet my publish- 
ers telephoned me every two or three hours, to say 
that editions of my latest novel were flying 
through multitudinous presses; that I must bear 
up under the strain and give the public what it 

[95] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

demands; namely, the glimpse of me and of my 
aristocratic wife. This, it seems, is what sells a 
book in America. The public must see an author 
in order to believe that he can write. 

"When my distinguished forebear Charles 
Dickens r arrived in the town of Boston, he found 
his room flooded with offers of a pew at Sunday 
morning church. This fashion in America has 
apparently passed, though I was taken on sight- 
seeing expeditions to various cathedrals whose 
architecture seemed to me to be execrable (largely 
European copies — nothing natively American). 
It was never suggested that I attend divine service. 
On the contrary, I had countless invitations to be 
present at what is known as a 'cocktail chase.' 
My New York literary admirers seemed tumbling 
over one another to offer me keys to their cellars 
and to invite me to take part in one of those 
strange functions. It is their love of danger, 
rather than any particular passion for liquor, 
that has, I believe, given birth to these elaborate 
fetes. 

"A cocktail chase takes place shortly before 
dinner. It may lead you into any one of a number 
of places, even as far as the outlying districts of 
the Bronx. If you own a motor, you may use 
that ; if not, a taxi will do. Usually a large num- 
ber of motors are employed. Add to this pursuing 
motorcycle policemen, and the sight is most im- 

1 The relationship was on my husband's father's side. The 
Turbots were never so closely connected with the bourgeoisie. 

[96] 



SHAMELESS FUN 

pressive. The police are for protection against 
crime waves, not for the arrest of the cocktail 
chasers. A revenue agent performs this function, 
when it becomes necessary. 

"The number of our invitations was so large 
that it was hard to pick and choose. Naturally, we 
did not care to risk attendance at any function 
which might injure our reputation. Usually my 
wife has an almost psychic sense of such matters ; 
but the Social Register was of no assistance in this 
case. 1 Before several hours had passed, however, 
we decided to hire a social secretary. I phoned 
my publisher for a recommendation. 'Dear 
Tubby,' he said, 'what you need is a publicity 
agent, not a social secretary. I'll send you the 
best New York can offer immediately. It was 
careless of me not to think of it before. You 
seemed to have a genius for that sort of thing 
yourself.' 

"The publicity agent is difficult to explain. He 
is somehow connected with an American game 
which originated in the great northwest, and 
which is called log-rolling. He stands between 
you and the public which is clamouring for a 
glimpse of you. The difference between a social 
secretary and a publicity agent seems to be that 
the former merely answers invitations, while the 
latter makes sure that you are invited. He writes 



1 We, of course, had entree to all the best Fifth Avenue homes, 
but since we have now become literary folk, we chose to re- 
main so. We therefore avoided the better classes. 



[97] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

your speeches for you, sometimes even goes so far 
as to write your novels, and, in a strange place, 
will impersonate you at all public functions unless 
your wife objects. 1 

"Mr. Vernay arrived, fortunately, in time to 
sort our invitations. 'First,' he said, 'just you 
and Terry' (he was one of those brusque new 
world types and Theresa rather enjoyed his fa- 
miliarity — 'so refreshing/ I remember she said) 
'sit right down and I'll tell you all about litera- 
ture in this here New York.' " 

... I have always been meaning to read 
Tubby's novels — so like those of Archibald Mar- 
shall and Anthony Trollope, I understand — but 
have never got around to it. Now I feel I simply 
must. 



Such an expert judge as Franklin P. Adams has 
considered that the ablest living parodist in verse 
is J. C. Squire. Certainly his Collected Parodies 
is a masterly performance quite fit to go on the 
shelf with Max Beerbohm's A Christmas Garland. 
In Collected Parodies will be found all those 
verses which, published earlier in magazines and 
in one or two books, have delighted the readers 
of Punch and other magazines — "Imaginary 
Speeches," "Steps to Parnassus," "Tricks of the 

1 Indeed Mr. Vernay was a most accomplished gentleman, 
and I never objected to him. I only remarked once that I 
was glad Timothy was not so attractive to the ladies as Mr. 
Vernay. This, I did not consider an objection. 

[98] 



SHAMELESS FUN 

Trade," "Repertory Drama, How They Do It 
and How They Would Have Done It," "Imag- 
inary Reviews and Speeches" and "The Aspir- 
ant's Manual." 

The great source book of fun in rhyme, how- 
ever, is and will for a long time remain Carolyn 
Wells's The Book of Humorous Verse. This has 
not an equal in existence, so far as I know, except 
The Home Book of Verse. Here in nearly 900 
pages are specimens of light verse from Chaucer to 
Chesterton. Modern writers, such as Bert Leston 
Taylor and Don Marquis, share the pages with 
Robert Herrick and William Cowper, Charles 
Lamb and Oliver Wendell Holmes. Verses whim- 
sical, satiric, narrative, punning — there is no con- 
ceivable variety overlooked by Miss Wells in 
what was so evidently a labour of love as well as 
of the most careful industry, an industry directed 
by an exceptional taste. 

P. G. Wodehouse used to write lyrics for musi- 
cal plays in England, interpolating one or two in 
existing successes. Then he came to America and 
began writing lyrics, interpolating them in musi- 
cal comedies over here. Then he began inter- 
polating extremely funny short stories in the 
American magazines and he has now succeeded in 
interpolating into modern fiction some of the 
funniest novels of the last few years. This bit 
from his latest, Three Men and a Maid, is typical : 

"Mrs. Hignett was never a very patient woman. 

1 'Let us take all your negative qualities for 

[99] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

granted/ she said curtly. 'I have no doubt that 
there are many things which you do not do. Let 
us confine ourselves to issues of definite impor- 
tance. What is it, if you have no objection to con- 
centrating your attention on that for a moment, 
that you wish to see me about ?' 

" This marriage.' 

" 'What marriage? 

'■ 'Your son's marriage.' 

" 'My son is not married.' 

" 'No, but he's going to be. At eleven o'clock 
this morning at the Little Church Around the 
Corner !' 

"Mrs. Hignett stared. 

"'Are you mad?' 

" 'Well, I'm not any too well pleased, I'm 
bound to say,' admitted Mr. Mortimer. 'You see, 
darn it all, I'm in love with the girl myself!' 

"'Who is this girl?' 

" 'Have been for years. I'm one of those silent, 
patient fellows who hang around and look a lot, 
but never tell their love. . . .' 

" 'Who is this girl who has entrapped my 
f 
I've always been one of those men who . . .' 

" 'Mr. Mortimer ! With your permission we 
will take your positive qualities for granted. In 
fact, we will not discuss you at all. . . . What 
is her name?' 

" 'Bennett.' 

"'Bennett? Wilhelmina Bennett? The daugh- 
[100] 



son 

11 c 



SHAMELESS FUN 

ter of Mr. Rufus Bennett 4 ? The red-haired girl 
I met at lunch one day at your father's house ?' 

" That's it. You're a great guesser. I think 
you ought to stop the thing.' 

" <I intend to.' 

"Tine!' 

" The marriage would be unsuitable in every 
way. Miss Bennett and my son do not vibrate 
on the same plane.' 

" That's right. I've noticed it myself.' 

" Their auras are not the same colour.' 

" If I thought that once,' said Bream Mor- 
timer, I've thought it a hundred times. I wish I 
had a dollar for every time I thought it. Not the 
same colour! That's the whole thing in a nut- 
shell.' " 

Mr. Wodehouse is described by a friend as 
"now a somewhat fluid inhabitant of England, 
running over here spasmodically. Last summer 
he bought a race-horse. It is the beginning of the 
end!" 



[101] 



Chapter VII 

THE VITALITY OF MARY ROBERTS 
RINEHART 



THE total result . . . after twelve years is 
that I have learned to sit down at my desk 
and begin work simultaneously," wrote Mrs. Rine- 
hart in 1917. "One thing died, however, in those 
years of readjustment and struggle. That was 
my belief in what is called 'inspiration.' I think 
I had it now and then in those days, moments 
when I felt things I had hardly words for, a 
breath of something much bigger than I was, a 
little lift in the veil. 

"It does not come any more. 

"Other things bothered me in those first early 
days. I seemed to have so many things to write 
about and writing was so difficult. Ideas came, 
but no words to clothe them. Now, when writing 
is easy, when the technique of my work bothers 
me no more than the pen I write with, I have less 
to say. 

"I have words, but fewer ideas to clothe in 
them. And, coming more and more often is the 
[102] 




MARY ROBERTS RINEHART 



[103] 



VITALITY OF MARY ROBERTS RINEHART 

feeling that, before I have commenced to do my 
real work, I am written out ; that I have for years 
wasted my substance in riotous writing and that 
now, when my chance is here, when I have lived 
and adventured, when, if ever, I am to record 
honestly my little page of these great times in 
which I live, now I shall fail." 

These surprising words appeared in an article 
in the American Magazine for 1917. Not many 
months later The Amazing Interlude was pub- 
lished and, quoting Mrs. Rinehart soon afterward, 
I said: "If her readers shared this feeling they 
must have murmured to themselves as they turned 
the absorbing pages of The Amazing Interlude: 
'How absurd !' It is doubtful if they recalled the 
spoken misgiving at all." 

Few novels of recent years have had so capti- 
vating a quality as had this war story. But I wish 
to emphasise again what I felt and tried to ex- 
press at that time — the sense of Mrs. Rinehart's 
vitality as a writer of fiction. In what seem to 
me to be her best books there is a freshness of 
feeling I find astonishing. I felt it in K; I found 
it in The Amazing Interlude; and I find it in her 
new novel just published, The Breaking Point. 

The Breaking Point is the story of a man's past 
and his inability to escape from it. If that were 
all, it might be a very commonplace subject in- 
deed. It is not all, nor half. 

Dr. Richard Livingstone, just past thirty, is 
supposedly the nephew of Dr. David Livingstone, 

[105] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

with whom he lives and whose practice he shares 
in the town of Haverly; but at the very outset of 
the novel, we have the fact that — according to a 
casual visitor in Haverly — Dr. Livingstone's dead 
brother had no son; was unmarried, anyway. 
And then it transpires that, whatever may have 
been the past, Dr. Livingstone has walled it off 
from the younger man's consciousness. The elder 
man has built up a powerful secondary person- 
ality — secondary in the point of time only, for 
Richard Livingstone is no longer aware of any 
other personality, nor scarcely of any former 
existence. He does, indeed, have fugitive mo- 
ments in which he recalls with a painful and un- 
satisfactory vagueness some manner of life that 
he once had a part in. But in his young man- 
hood, in the pleasant village where there is none 
who isn't his friend, deeply centred in his work, 
stayed by the affection of Dr. Livingstone, these 
whispers of the past are infrequent and untroub- 
ling. 

The casual visitor's surprise and the undercur- 
rent of talk which she starts is the beginning of a 
rapid series of incidents which force the problem 
of the past up to the threshold of Richard Liv- 
ingstone's consciousness. There would then be 
two ways of facing his difficulties, and he takes 
the braver. Confronted with an increasingly 
difficult situation, a situation sharpened by his 
love for Elizabeth Wheeler, and her love for him, 
young Dr. Dick plays the man. 

[106] 



VITALITY OF MARY ROBERTS RINEHART 

The title of Mrs. Rinehart' s story comes from 
the psychological (and physical) fact that there 
is in every man and woman a point at which 
Nature steps in and says : 

"See here, you can't stand this! You've got 
to forget it." 

This is the breaking point, the moment when 
amnesia intervenes. But later there may come a 
time when the erected wall safeguarding the sec- 
ondary personality gives way. The first, sub- 
merged or walled-off personality may step across 
the levelled barrier. That extraordinarily dra- 
matic moment does come in the new novel and 
is handled by Mrs. Rinehart with triumphant 
skill. 

It will be seen that this new novel bears some 
resemblances to K, by many of her readers con- 
sidered Mrs. Rinehart's most satisfactory story. 
If I may venture a personal opinion, The Break- 
ing Point is a much stronger novel than K. To 
me it seems to combine the excellence of char- 
acter delineation noticeable in K with the dra- 
matic thrill and plot effectiveness which made 
The Amazing Interlude so irresistible as you 
read it. 



11 

To say so much is to bear the strongest testi- 
mony to that superb vitality, which, characteristic 
of Mrs. Rinehart as a person, is yet more charac- 

[107] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

teristic of her fiction. There is, I suppose, this 
additional interest in regard to The Breaking 
Point, that Mrs. Rinehart is the wife of a physi- 
cian and was herself, before her marriage, a 
trained nurse. The facts of her life are interest- 
ing, though not nearly so interesting as the way 
in which she tells them. 

She was the daughter of Thomas Beveridge 
Roberts and Cornelia (Gilleland) Roberts of 
Pittsburgh. From the city's public and high 
schools she went into a training school for nurses, 
acquiring that familiarity with hospital scenes 
which served her so well when she came to write 
The Amazing Adventures of Letitia Carberry, the 
stories collected under the title of Tish and the 
novel K. She became, at nineteen, the wife of 
Stanley Marshall Rinehart, a Pittsburgh physi- 
cian. 

"Life was very good to me at the beginning," 
said Mrs. Rinehart in the American Magazine 
article I have referred to. "It gave me a strong 
body and it gave me my sons before it gave me 
my work. I do not know what would have hap- 
pened had the work come first, but I should have 
had the children. I know that. I had always 
wanted them. Even my hospital experience, 
which rent the veil of life for me, and showed it 
often terrible, could not change that fundamental 
thing we call the maternal instinct. ... I would 
forfeit every part of success that has come to me 
rather than lose any part, even the smallest, of 

[108] 



VITALITY OF MARY ROBERTS RINEHART 

my family life. It is on the foundation of my 
home that I have builded. 

"Yet, for a time, it seemed that my sons were 
to be all I was to have out of life. From twenty 
to thirty I was an invalid. . . . This last sum- 
mer (1917), after forty days in the saddle 
through unknown mountains in Montana and 
Washington, I was as unwearied as they were. 
But I paid ten years for them.' , 

Mrs. Rinehart had always wanted to write. 
She began in 1905 — she was twenty-nine that 
year — and worked at a tiny mahogany desk or 
upon a card table "so low and so movable. It 
can sit by the fire or in a sunny window.' ' She 
"learned to use a typewriter with my two fore- 
fingers with a baby on my knee!" She wrote 
when the children were out for a walk, asleep, 
playing. "It was frightfully hard. ... I found 
that when I wanted to write I could not and then, 
when leisure came and I went to my desk, I had 
nothing to say." 

I quote from a chapter on Mrs. Rinehart in 
my book The Women Who Make Our Novels: 

"Her first work was mainly short stories and 
poems. Her very first work was verse for chil- 
dren. Her first check was for $25, the reward of 
a short article telling how she had systematised 
the work of a household with two maids and a 
negro 'buttons.' She sold one or two of the poems 
for children and with a sense of guilt at the de- 
sertion of her family made a trip to New York. 

[109] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

She made the weary rounds in one day, 'a heart- 
breaking day, going from publisher to publisher.' 
In two places she saw responsible persons and 
everywhere her verses were turned down. 'But 
one man was very kind to me, and to that pub- 
lishing house I later sent The Circular Staircase, 
my first novel. They published it and some eight 
other books of mine.' 

"In her first year of sustained effort at writing, 
Mrs. Rinehart made about $1,200. She was sur- 
rounded by 'sane people who cried me down, 5 but 
who were merry without being contemptuous. 
Her husband has been her everlasting help. He 
'has stood squarely behind me, always. His be- 
lief in me, his steadiness and his sanity and his 
humour have kept me going, when, as has hap- 
pened now and then, my little world of letters has 
shaken under my feet.' To the three boys their 
mother's work has been a matter of course ever 
since they can remember. T did not burst on 
them gloriously. I am glad to say that they 
think I am a much better mother than I am a 
writer, and that the family attitude in general has 
been attentive but not supine. They regard it 
exactly as a banker's family regards his bank.' ' 

Most of the work of the twelve years from 
1905 to 1917 was done in Mrs. Rinehart' s home. 
But when she had a long piece of work to do she 
often felt "the necessity of getting away from 
everything for a little while." So, beginning 
about 1915, she rented a room in an office build- 
[no] 



VITALITY OF MARY ROBERTS RINEHART 

ing in Pittsburgh once each year while she was 
writing a novel. It was sparsely furnished and, 
significantly, it contained no telephone. In 1917 
she became a commuter from her home in Se- 
wickley, a Pittsburgh suburb. Her earnings had 
risen to $50,000 a year and more. 

"My business with its various ramifications had 
been growing; an enormous correspondence, in- 
volving business details, foreign rights, copy- 
rights, moving picture rights, translation rights, 
second serial rights, and dramatisations, had made 
from the small beginning of that book of poems a 
large and complicated business. 

"I had added political and editorial writing to 
my other work, and also records of travel. I was 
quite likely to begin the day with an article op- 
posing capital punishment, spend the noon hours 
in the Rocky Mountains, and finish off with a love 
story ! 

"I developed the mental agility of a mountain 
goat ! Filing cases entered into my life, card in- 
dex systems. To glance into my study after work- 
ing hours was dismaying." 

More recently, Mrs. Rinehart has become a resi- 
dent of Washington, D. C. Her husband is 
engaged in the Government health service and the 
family lives in the Wardman Park Hotel, having 
taken the apartment of the late Senator Boies Pen- 
rose of Pennsylvania. 



[in] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

iii 

"Yet, if I were to begin again, I would go 
through it all, the rejections at the beginning, the 
hard work, the envious and malicious hands 
reached up to pull down anyone who has risen 
ever so little above his fellows. Not for the 
money reward, although that has been large, not 
for the publicity, although I am frank enough to 
say I would probably miss being pointed out in a 
crowd! But because of two things: the friends 
I have made all over the world, and the increased 
outlook and a certain breadth of perception and 
knowledge that must come as the result of years 
of such labour. I am not so intolerant as in those 
early days. I love my kind better. I find the 
world good, to work and to play in. 

"I sometimes think, if I were advising a young 
woman as to a career, that I should say; 'First, 
pick your husband.' 

"It is impossible to try to tell how I have at- 
tempted to reconcile my private life with my 
public work without mentioning my husband. 
Because, after all, it requires two people, a man 
and a woman, to organise a home, and those two 
people must be in accord. It has been a sort of 
family creed of ours that we do things together. 
We have tried, because of the varied outside in- 
terests that pull hard, to keep the family life even 
more intact than the average. Differing widely 
as they do, my husband's profession and my ca- 

[112] 



VITALITY OF MARY ROBERTS RINEHART 

reer, we have been compelled to work apart. But 
we have relaxed, rested and played, together. 

"And this rule holds good for the family. Gen- 
erally speaking, we have been a sort of closed 
corporation, a board of five, with each one given 
a vote and the right to cast it. Holidays and 
home matters, and picnics and dogs, and every- 
thing that is of common interest all come up for a 
discussion in which the best opinion wins. The 
small boy had a voice as well as the biggest boy. 
And it worked well. 

"It is not because we happened to like the same 
things. People do not happen to like the same 
things. It is because we tried to, and it is because 
we have really all grown up together. 

"Thus in the summer we would spend weeks in 
the saddle in the mountains of the Far West, or 
fishing in Canada. But let me be entirely frank 
here. These outdoor summers were planned at 
first because there were four men and one woman 
in our party. Now, however, I love the open 
as the men do." 



IV 

"Writing is a clean profession. The writer gets 
out of it exactly what he puts in, no more and no 
less. It is one-man work. No one can help. The 
writer works alone, solitary and unaided. And, 
contrary to the general opinion, what the writer 
has done in the past does not help him in the 

[113] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

future. He must continue to make good, day 
after day. 

"More than that he must manufacture a new 
article every day, and every working hour of his 
day. He cannot repeat himself. Can you imag- 
ine a manufacturer turning out something differ- 
ent all the time*? And his income stopping if he 
has a sick headache, or goes to a funeral*?" 



Next to the vitality, the variety of Mrs. Rine- 
hart' s work is most noticeable. Her first novel, 
The Circular Staircase, was a mystery tale, and so 
was her second, The Man in Lower Ten. She has, 
from time to time, continued to write excellent 
mystery stories. The Breaking Point is, from one 
standpoint, a first class mystery story; and then 
there is that enormously successful mystery play, 
written by Mrs. Rinehart in conjunction with 
Avery Hopwood, The Bat. Nor was this her first 
success as a playwright for she collaborated with 
Mr. Hopwood in writing the farce Seven Days. 
Shall I add that Mrs. Rinehart has lived part of 
her life in haunted houses? I am under the im- 
pression that more than one of her residences has 
been found to be suitably or unsuitably haunted. 
There was that house at Bellport on Long Island 
— but I really don't know the story. I do know 
that the family's experience has been such as to 
provide material for one or more very good mys- 

[114] 



VITALITY OF MARY ROBERTS RINEHART 

tery novels. My own theory is that Mrs. Rine- 
hart's indubitable gift for the creation of mystery 
yarns has been responsible for the facts. I imag- 
ine that the haunting of the houses has been a pro- 
jection into some physical plane of her busy sub- 
consciousness. I mean, simply, that instead of 
materialising as a story, her preoccupation in- 
duced a set of actual and surprising circumstances. 
Why couldn't it? Let Sir Oliver Lodge or Sir 
Arthur Conan Doyle, the Society for Psychical 
Research, anybody who knows about that sort of 
thing, explain! 

Consider the stories about Letitia Carberry. 
Tish is without a literary parallel. Well-to-do, 
excitement loving, with a passion for guiding the 
lives of two other elderly maidens like herself; 
with a nephew who throws up hopeless hands be- 
fore her unpredictable performances, Tish is 
funny beyond all description. 

Just as diverting, in a quite different way, is 
Bab, the sub-deb and forerunner of the present- 
day flapper. 

Something like a historical romance is Long 
Live the King! — a story of a small boy, Crown 
Prince of a Graustark kingdom, whose scrapes 
and friendships and admiration of Abraham Lin- 
coln are strikingly contrasted with court intrigues 
and uncovered treason. 

The Amazing Interlude is the story of Sara Lee 
Kennedy, who went from a Pennsylvania city to 
the Belgian front to make soup for the soldiers 

[115] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

and to fall in love with Henri. . . . But one 
could go on with other samples of Mrs. Rinehart's 
abundant variety. I think, however, that the vi- 
tality of her work, and not the variety nor the 
success in variety, is our point. That vitality has 
its roots in a sympathetic feeling and a sanative 
humour not exceeded in the equipment of any 
popular novelist writing in America today. 

Books 
by Mary Roberts Rinehart 

THE CIRCULAR STAIRCASE 

THE MAN IN LOWER TEN 

WHEN A MAN MARRIES 

THE WINDOW AT THE WHITE CAT 

THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF LETITIA CARBERRY 

WHERE THERE'S A WILL 

THE CASE OF JENNY BRICE 

THE AFTER HOUSE 

THE STREET OF SEVEN STARS 

K 

THROUGH GLACIER PARK 

TISH 

THE ALTAR OF FREEDOM 

LONG LIVE THE KING 

TENTING TO-NIGHT 

BAB, A SUB-DEB 

KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

THE AMAZING INTERLUDE 

TWENTY-THREE AND A HALF HOURS* LEAVE 



[116] 



VITALITY OF MARY ROBERTS RINEHART 

DANGEROUS DAYS 

MORE TISH 

LOVE STORIES 

AFFINITIES AND OTHER STORIES 

"ISN'T THAT JUST LIKE A MAN?" 

THE TRUCE OF GOD 

A POOR WISE MAN 

SIGHT UNSEEN AND THE CONFESSION 

THE BREAKING POINT 



Sources 
on Mary Roberts Rinehart 

"My Creed: The Way to Happiness — As I Found 
It" by Mary Roberts Rinehart. American 
magazine, October, 1917. 

"Mary Roberts Rinehart as She Appears" by 
Robert H. Davis, American magazine, Oc- 
tober, 1917. 

"My Public," by Mary Roberts Rinehart, the 
bookman, December, 1920. 

The Women Who Make Our Novels, by Grant 
Overton, moffat, yard & company. 

Who's Who in America, 



[117] 



Chapter VIII 
THEY HAVE ONLY THEMSELVES TO BLAME 



IF people will write memoirs, they must expect 
to suffer. They have only themselves to 
blame if life becomes almost intolerable from the 
waves of praise and censure. I am going to speak 
of some books of memoirs and biography — highly 
personal and decidedly unusual books, in the 
main by persons who are personages. 

The Life of Sir William Vernon Harcourt con- 
cerns Sir William George Granville Venables 
Vernon Harcourt, who was born in 1827 and died 
in 1904. He was an English statesman, grandson 
of Edward Vernon Harcourt, Archbishop of York. 
He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, 
and was called to the bar in 1854. He entered 
Parliament (for Oxford) in 1868, sat for Derby 
1880-95, and for West Monmouthshire, 1895- 
1904. He was Solicitor-general 1873-74, Home 
Secretary 1880-85 and Chancellor of the Ex- 
chequer in 1886, 1892-94 and 1894-95. From 
March, 1894, to December, 1898, he was leader 
■of the Liberal Party in the House of Commons. 

[118] 



ONLY THEMSELVES TO BLAME 

He wrote in the London Times under the signa- 
ture of "Historicus" a series of letters on Inter- 
national Law, which were republished in 1863. 
His biography, which begins before Victoria 
ascended the throne and closes after her death, 
is the work of A. G. Gardiner. 

Memoirs of the Memorable is by Sir James 
Denham, the poet-author of "Wake Up, Eng- 
land!" and deals with most of the prominent so- 
cial names of the end of the last and commence- 
ment of this century^ including Mr. Gladstone, 
Lord Beaconsfield, Lord Byron, Robert Browning, 
the Bishop of London, Cardinal Howard, Lord 
Dunedin, Lewis Carroll, Lord Marcus Beresford 
and the late Bishop of Manchester. The book 
also deals with club life and the leading sports- 
men. 

The Pomp of Power is by an author who very 
wisely remains anonymous, like the author of 
The Mirrors of Downing Street. I shall not run 
the risks of perjury by asserting or denying that 
the author of The Mirrors of Downing Street has 
written The Pomp of Power. As to the proba- 
bility perhaps readers of The Pomp of Power 
had better judge. It is an extremely frank book 
and its subjects include the leading personalities 
of Great Britain to-day and, indeed, all the world. 
Lloyd George, Field-Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, 
Lord Haig, Marshal JorTre, Lord Beaverbrook, 
Millerand, Loucheur, Painleve, Cambon, Lord 
NorthclirTe, Colonel Repington and Krassin of 

[u 9 ] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

Soviet Russia are the persons principally por- 
trayed. The book throws a searchlight upon the 
military and diplomatic relations of Britain and 
France before and during the war, and also deals 
with the present international situation. It may 
fairly be called sensational. 

Especially interesting is the anonymous au- 
thor's revelation of the role played in the war by 
Field-Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, so lately assas- 
sinated in London. The author was evidently an 
intimate of Sir Henry and, just as evidently, he 
is intimately acquainted with Lloyd George, 
apparently having worked with or under the 
Prime Minister. He is neither Lloyd George's 
friend nor enemy and his portrait of the Prime 
Minister is the most competent I can recall. Can 
he be Philip Kerr, Lloyd George's adviser 4 ? 

I praise, in this slightly superlative fashion, 
the picture of the British Prime Minister by the 
author of The Pomp of Power . . . and I pick 
up another book and discover it to be E. T. Ray- 
mond's Mr. Lloyd George: A Biographical and 
Critical Sketch. The author of tlncensored 
Celebrities is far too modest when he calls his 
new work a "sketch." It is a genuine biography 
with that special accent due to the biographer's 
personality and his power of what I may call 
penetrative synthesis. By that I mean the insight 
into character which coordinates and builds — the 
sort of biography that makes a legend about a 
man. 

[120] 



ONLY THEMSELVES TO BLAME 

Mr. Raymond does not begin with the "little 
Welshman" but with a Roman Emperor, Diocle- 
tian, our first well-studied exemplar of the "coali- 
tion mind." These are the words with which, 
after a brilliant survey of the Prime Minister's 
career, the author closes: 

'Tf, however, we withhold judgment on every 
point where a difference of opinion is possible, if 
we abandon to destructive criticism every act of 
administrative vigour which is claimed by his 
admirers as a triumph, if we accept the least 
charitable view of his faults and failures, there 
still remains more than enough with which to 
defy what Lord Rosebery once called 'the body- 
snatchers of history, who dig up dead reputations 
for malignant dissection.' If only that he im- 
parted, in a black time, when it appeared but 
too likely that the Alliance might falter and suc- 
cumb from mere sick-headache, his own defying, 
ardent, and invincible spirit to a tired, puzzled, 
distracted and distrustful nation; if only that he 
dispelled the vapours, inspired a new hope and 
resolution, brought the British people to that 
temper which makes small men great, assured our 
Allies that their cause was in the fullest sense 
our own, and finally achieved the great moral 
victory implied in 'unity of command' — if these 
things be alone considered, he will be judged to 
have earned for his portrait the right to a digni- 
fied place in the gallery of history; and some 
future generation will probably recall with aston- 

[121] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

ishment that it was considered unfit to adorn the 
dining-room of a London club." 

And here are two new books by Margot As- 
quith! One is My Impressions of America, the 
other continues The Autobiography of Margot 
Asquith. Of the first of these books there is to 
say that it represents Mrs. Asquith' s matured im- 
pressions and will have a value that could not 
possibly attach to interviews or statements she 
gave on this side. It also gives, for the first 
time, her frank and direct analyses of the person- 
alities of the distinguished people whom she met 
in America. The continuation of her Autobiog- 
raphy is a different matter. Those who have read 
The Autobiography of Margot Asquith will be 
prepared for the new book. At least, I hope they 
will be prepared and yet I question whether they 
will. There is, after all, only one person for Mrs. 
Asquith to surpass, and that is herself; and I 
think she has done it. This new book will add 
Volumes III. and IV. to The Autobiography of 
Margot Asquith. 

In The Memoirs of Djemal Pasha: Turkey 
igij-21 will be found the recollections of a man 
who was successively Military Governor of Con- 
stantinople, Minister of Public Works and Naval 
Minister and who, with Enver Bey and Talaat 
Bey, formed the triumvirate which dictated Turk- 
ish policy and guided Turkey's fate after the coup 
d'etat of 1913. I believe these memoirs are of 
extraordinary interest and the greatest impor- 
[122] 



ONLY THEMSELVES TO BLAME 

tance. They give the first and only account from 
the Turkish side of events in Turkey since 1913. 
The development of relations with Germany, 
France and England immediately before the war 
is clearly traced, and a graphic account is given of 
the first two months of the war, the escape of the 
Goeben and the attempts made to keep Turkey 
neutral. When these failed, Djemal Pasha was 
sent to govern Syria and to command the Fourth 
Army, which was to conquer Egypt. The attack 
on the Suez Canal is described, and then the series 
of operations which culminated in the British re- 
verses in the two battles of Gaza. Further im- 
portant sections are devoted to the revolt of the 
Arabs and the question of responsibility for the 
Armenian massacres. 

The value of Miscellanies— Literary and His- 
torical, by Lord Rosebery, consists not so much in 
his recollections of people as in the delight of 
reading good prose. Lord Rosebery has a natural 
dignity and a charm of lucid phrasing that adapts 
itself admirably to the essay form he has chosen. 
The subjects he takes up are beloved figures of 
the past. Robert Burns, as Lord Rosebery talks 
of him, walks about in Dumfries and holds spell- 
bound by sheer personal charm the guests of the 
tavern. There are papers on Burke, on Dr. John- 
son, on Robert Louis Stevenson, and others as 
great. One group deals with Scottish History 
and one with the service of the state. The last is 
a study of the genius loci of such places of mellow 

[123] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

associations as Eton and the Turf. The sort of 
book one returns to! 



n 

I was going to say something about Andrew 
C. P. Haggard's book, Madame de Stael: Her 
Trials and Triumphs, But so profoundly con- 
vinced am I of the book's fascination that I shall 
reprint the first chapter. If this is not worthy of 
Lytton Strachey, I am no judge: 

"In the year 1751 a young fellow, only fourteen 
years of age, went to Magdalen College at Ox- 
ford, and in the same year displayed his budding 
talent by writing The Age of Sesostris, Conqueror 
of Asia, which work he burnt in later years. 

"The boy was Edward Gibbon, who, after be- 
coming a Roman Catholic at the age of sixteen, 
was sent by his father to Switzerland, to continue 
his education in the house of a Calvinist minister 
named M. Pavilliard, under the influence of 
which gentleman he became a Protestant again at 
Lausanne eighteen months later. 

"The young fellow, while leading the life of 
gaiety natural to his age in company with a friend 
named Deyverdun, became an apt student of the 
classics and was soon a proficient in French, in 
which tongue he wrote before long as fluently as in 
English. With young Deyverdun he worked, and 
in his company Edward Gibbon also played. 
After visiting frequently at the house of the cele- 
[124] 



ONLY THEMSELVES TO BLAME 

brated Voltaire at Monrepos, and after being 
present when the distinguished French philoso- 
pher played in his own comedies and sentimental 
pieces, the young fellow's thoughts soon turned to 
the theme which was the continual subject of con- 
versation of the ladies and gentlemen who were 
Voltaire's guests and formed the company of 
amateurs with whom the great dramatic writer 
was in the habit of rehearsing his plays. This 
was, as might have been suspected in such a so- 
ciety, the theme of love. 

"As it happened, there was in the habit of visit- 
ing Lausanne a young lady who was a perfect 
paragon. Her name was Suzanne Curchod, and 
she was half Swiss and half French, her father 
being a Swiss pastor and her mother a French- 
woman. 

"Very handsome and sprightly in appearance, 
the fair Suzanne was well instructed in sciences 
and languages. Her wit, beauty and erudition 
made her a prodigy and an object of universal 
admiration upon the occasion of her visits to her 
relations in Lausanne. Soon an intimate connec- 
tion existed between Edward Gibbon and her- 
self; he frequently accompanied her to stay at 
her mountain home at Crassy, while at Lausanne 
also they indulged in their dream of felicity. 
Edward loved the brilliant Suzanne with a union 
of desire, friendship, and tenderness, and was in 
later years proud of the fact that he was once 
capable of feeling such an exalted sentiment. 

[125] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

There is no doubt that, had he been able to con- 
sult his own inclinations alone, Gibbon would 
have married Mademoiselle Curchod, but, the 
time coming when he was forced to return to his 
home in England his father declared that he would 
not hear of 'such a strange alliance.' 

" 'Thereupon/ says Gibbon in his autobiog- 
raphy, T yielded to my fate — sighed as a lover, 
obeyed as a son, and my wound was insensibly 
healed by time, absence and new habits of life.' 

"These habits of life included four or five years' 
service in the Hampshire Militia, in which corps 
Suzanne's lover became a captain, the regiment 
being embodied during the period of the Seven 
Years' War. 

"Upon returning to Lausanne, at the age of 
twenty-six, in 1763, Edward Gibbon was warmly 
received by his old love, but he heard that she had 
been flirting with others, and notably with his 
friend M. Deyverdun. He himself, while now 
mixing with an agreeable society of twenty un- 
married young ladies who, without any chaperons, 
mingled with a crowd of young men of all na- 
tions, also 'lost many hours in dissipation.' 

"He was not long in showing Suzanne that he 
no longer found her indispensable to his happi- 
ness, with the result that she assailed him, al- 
though in vain, with angry reproaches. Notwith- 
standing that she begged Gibbon to be her friend 
if no longer her lover, while vowing herself to be 
confiding and tender, he acted hard-heartedly and 

[126] 



ONLY THEMSELVES TO BLAME 

declined to return to his old allegiance, coldly re- 
plying: 'I feel the dangers that continued corre- 
spondence may have for both of us/ 

"It is impossible to feel otherwise than sorry 
for the brilliant Suzanne at this period, as al- 
though from her subsequent manoeuvres it be- 
came evident that her principal object in life was 
to obtain a rich husband, from the manner in 
which she humiliated herself to him it is evident 
that she was passionately in love with the author 
of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. 

"Eventually the neglected damsel gave up the 
siege of an unwilling lover, while assuring her 
formerly devoted Edward that the day would 
come 'when he would regret the irreparable loss 
of the too frank and tender heart of Suzanne 
Curchod/ 

"Had the pair been united, one wonders what 
would have been the characteristics of the off- 
spring of an English literary man like Gibbon, 
who became perhaps the world's greatest his- 
torian, and a beautiful woman of mixed nation- 
ality, whose subsequent career, although gilded 
with riches and adorned with a position of power, 
displays nothing above the mediocre and com- 
monplace. 

"Edward Gibbon's fame, which was not long 
in coming, was his own, and will remain for so 
long as a love of history and literature exists in 
the world, whereas that of Suzanne Curchod rests 
upon two circumstances — the first that she was 

[127] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

once the sweetheart of Gibbon, the second that 
she was the mother of a Madame de Stael. 

"When finally cast off by the Englishman, the 
Swiss Pastor's daughter remembered that, if 
pretty, she was poor, and had her way to make in 
the world. She commenced to play fast and loose 
with a M. Correvon, a rich lawyer, whom she said 
she would marry 'if she had only to live with him 
for four months in each year.' 

"The next lover was a pastor, who was as mer- 
cenary as herself, for he threw her over for a lady 
with a large fortune. After this failure to estab- 
lish herself, Suzanne became tired of seeking a 
husband in Switzerland and went to Paris as the 
companion of the rich and handsome Madame 
Vermoneux, the supposed mistress of Jacques 
Necker, the rich Swiss banker, who was estab- 
lished in the French capital. Once in Paris, it 
was not long before by her seductions Suzanne 
succeeded in supplanting Madame Vermoneux in 
the still young banker's affections, with the result 
that she married him in 1764. 

"Gibbon, whom she had last seen in 1763, re- 
turned to the side of his former love when she was 
at length safely married to another man. We find 
him writing in 1765, to his friend Lord Sheffield, 
formerly Mr. Holroyd, that he had spent ten de- 
licious days in Paris about the end of June. 'She 
was very fond of me, and the husband was par- 
ticularly civil.' He continues confidentially: 
'Could they insult me more cruelly? Ask me 

[128] 



ONLY THEMSELVES TO BLAME 

every evening to supper, go to bed and leave me 
alone with his wife — what an impertinent se- 
curity !' 

"It was in the month of April in the following 
year, 1766, that was born Madame Necker's only 
child, Anne Louise Germaine, who was destined 
to become one of the most remarkable women of 
modern times. From the great literary talent 
displayed by this wonderfully precocious child 
from girlhood, it is difficult not to imagine but 
that in some, if merely spiritual, way the genius 
of her mother's old lover had descended through 
that mother's brain as a mantle upon herself. 
That she learnt to look upon Gibbon with admira- 
tion at an early age is sure. Michelet informs us 
that owing to the praises showered upon the his- 
torian by M. Necker, Germaine was anxious, as 
her mother had been before her, to become Gib- 
bon's wife. She was, however, destined to have 
another husband — or rather we should say two 
other husbands." 



111 

Recollections and Reflections by a Woman of 
No Importance has added greatly to the number 
of this author's readers, gained in the first instance 
by her Memories Discreet and Indiscreet, which 
was followed by More Indiscretions, 

Recollections and Reflections consists of ran- 
dom memories of lords and ladies, sportsmen, 

[129] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

Kings, Queens, cooks, chauffeurs and Empresses, 
related with a great deal of philosophy and insight 
and no little wit. 

There are stories of Gladstone's love-making, 
of Empress Eugenie and the diamond the soldier 
swallowed, of Balfour's hats, Henry Irving's 
swelled head and the cosmetics of Disraeli. 
There are stories of etiquette at a hair-dressers' 
ball side by side with comments on Kitchener's 
waltzing. 

Lady Angela Forbes was the daughter of the 
fourth Earl of Rosslyn and the youngest child of 
one of the largest and most prominent families in 
England. Kitchener, Lord Roberts, Disraeli, the 
Kaiser, Prince Edward — she has dined or sailed 
or hunted with them all on the most informal 
terms. She tells, with engaging frankness, in 
Memories and Base Detail s 9 of the gaieties, the 
mistakes and tragedies of herself and her friends. 

It was Baron von Margutti who informed the 
Emperor Francis Joseph in 1914 that Serbia had 
rejected his ultimatum. The character of the 
Emperor is a moot question. The Emperor 
Francis Joseph and His Times, reminiscences by 
Baron von Margutti, is by a man who knew the 
Emperor intimately and who knew the men and 
women who surrounded him daily. Baron von 
Margutti met all the distinguished European fig- 
ures, such as Edward VII, Emperor Wilhelm, 
Czar Nicholas and the Empress Eugenie who 
came to Austria to visit. He watched from a par- 

[130] 



ONLY THEMSELVES TO BLAME 

ticularly favourable vantage point the deft moves 
of secret diplomacy which interlaced the various 
governments. 

Lord Frederic Hamilton, born in 1856, the 
fourth son of the first Duke of Abercorn, was edu- 
cated at Harrow, was formerly in the British 
Diplomatic Service and served successively as 
Secretary of the British Embassies in Berlin and 
Petrograd and the Legations at Lisbon and 
Buenos Aires. He has travelled much and, be- 
sides being in Parliament, was editor of the Pall 
Mall Magazine till 1900. The popularity of his 
books of reminiscences is explained by the fasci- 
nating way in which he tells a story or illuminates 
a character. Other books of memoirs have been 
more widely celebrated but I know of none which 
has made friends who were more enthusiastic. 
The Vanished Pomps of Yesterday, Days Before 
Yesterday and Here, There and Everywhere are 
constantly in demand. 

But, all along, a surprise has been in store 
and the time is now here to disclose it! The 
talent for this delightful species of memoirising 
runs through the family; and Sir Frederic Hamil- 
ton's brother, Lord Ernest Hamilton, proves it. 
Lord Ernest is the author of Forty Years On, a 
new book quite as engaging as Here, There and 
Everywhere, and the rest of Sir Frederic's. Word 
from London is that Sir Frederic will have no 
new book this year; he steps aside with a gallant 
bow for Lord Ernest. I have been turning pages 

[131] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

in Forty Years On and reading about such mat- 
ters as the Copley curse, school life at Harrow 
where Shifner and others bowed the knee to Baal, 
bull fights in Peru and adventures in the Klon- 
dike. Personally the most amusing moments of 
the book I find to be those in which Lord Ernest 
describes his experiments in speaking ancient 
Greek in modern Greece. But this is perhaps be- 
cause I, too, have tried to speak syllables of 
Xenophon while being rapidly driven (in a 
barouche) about Patras — with the same lament- 
able results. It is enough to unhinge the reason, 
the pronunciation of modern Greek, I mean. 
But maybe your hobby is bathing*? Lord Ernest 
has a word in praise of Port Antonio, Jamaica, 
as a bathing ground. 

What he says about hummingbirds — but I 
mustn't! Forty Years On is a mine of interest 
and each reader ought to be pretty well left to 
work it for himself. 



[132] 



Chapter IX 
AUDACIOUS MR. BENNETT 



MR. BENNETT'S audacity has always been 
evident. One might say that he began by 
daring to tell the truth about an author, con- 
tinued by daring to tell the truth about the Five 
Towns, and has now reached the incredible stage 
where he dares to tell the truth about marriage. 
This is affronting Fate indeed. It was all very 
well for Arnold Bennett, to write a play called 
Cupid and Commonsense. Perhaps, in view of 
the fact that it is one of the great novels of the 
twentieth century, it was all right for him to cre- 
ate The Old Wives' Tale; but it cannot be all 
right for him to compose such novels as Mr. Pro- 
hack and his still newer story, Lilian. 

Think of the writers who have stumbled and 
fallen over the theme of marriage. There is 
W. L. George . . . but I cannot bring myself 
to name other names and discuss their tragic 
fates. There are those who have sought to make 
the picture of marriage a picture of horror; but 
that was because they did not dare to tell the 

[133] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

truth. That marriage is all, no one but Mr. 
Bennett seems to realise. No one but Mr. Ben- 
nett seems to realise that, as between husband and 
wife, there are no such things as moral standards, 
there can be no such thing as an ethical code, there 
can be no interposition of lofty abstractions which 
Men call principles and appeal to as they would 
appeal to a just God, Himself. No one but Mr. 
Bennett seems to realise that the relation between 
a man and his wife necessarily transcends every 
abstraction, brushes aside every ideal of "right" 
and "wrong." Mr. Bennett, in the course of the 
amazing discoveries of an amazing lifetime, has 
made the greatest discovery possible to mortals 
of this planet. He has discovered that marriage 
occurs when a man and a woman take the law 
into their own hands, and not only the human law, 
but the divine. 

It would be impossible for the hero of a Bennett 
novel of recent years to be a character like Mark 
Sabre in If Winter Comes. Arnold Bennett's 
married hero would realise that the health, com- 
fort, wishes, doubts, dissimulations; the jealous- 
ies, the happiness or the fancied happiness, and 
the exterior appearances of the woman who was 
his wife abolish, for practical purposes, every- 
thing else. It is due to Mr. Bennett more than to 
anyone else that we now understand that while 
"husband" may be a correct legal designation, 
"lover" is the only possible aesthetic appellation 
of the man who is married. If he is not a lover 

[134] 




ARNOLD BENNETT 



[135] 



AUDACIOUS MR. BENNETT 

he is not a husband except for statutory purposes 
— that is all. 



n 

It is hard to describe Lilian. I will let you 
taste it: 

"Lilian, in dark blue office frock with an em- 
broidered red line round the neck and detachable 
black wristlets that preserved the ends of the 
sleeves from dust and friction, sat idle at her flat 
desk in what was called 'the small room' at Felix 
Grig's establishment in Clifford Street, off Bond 
Street. There were three desks, three typewriting 
machines and three green-shaded lamps. Only 
Lilian's lamp was lighted, and she sat alone, with 
darkness above her chestnut hair and about her, 
and a circle of radiance below. She was twenty- 
three. Through the drawn blind of the window 
could just be discerned the backs of the letters of 
words painted on the glass: Telix Grig. Type- 
writing Office. Open day and night.' Seen from 
the street the legend stood out black and clear 
against the faintly glowing blind. It was 
eleven p.m. 

"That a beautiful girl, created for pleasure and 
affection and expensive flattery, should be sitting 
by herself at eleven p.m., in a gloomy office in 
Clifford Street, in the centre of the luxurious, 
pleasure-mad, love-mad West End of London 
seemed shocking and contrary to nature, and 

[137] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

Lilian certainly so regarded it. She pictured the 
shut shops, and shops and yet again shops, filled 
with elegance and costliness — robes, hats, stock- 
ings, shoes, gloves, incredibly fine lingerie, furs, 
jewels, perfumes — designed and confected for the 
setting-off of just such young attractiveness as 
hers. She pictured herself rifling those deserted 
and silent shops by some magic means and emerg- 
ing safe, undetected, in batiste so rare that her 
skin blushed through it, in a frock that was price- 
less and yet nothing at all, and in warm marvel- 
lous sables that no blast of wind or misfortune 
could ever penetrate — and diamonds in her hair. 
She pictured thousands of smart women, with 
imperious command over rich, attendant males, 
who at that very moment were moving quickly in 
automobiles from theatres towards the dancing- 
clubs that clustered round Felix Grig's typewrit- 
ing office. At that very moment she herself ought 
to have been dancing. Not in a smart club ; no ! 
Only in the basement of a house where an ac- 
quaintance of hers lodged; and only with clerks 
and things like that ; and only a gramophone. But 
still a dance, a respite from the immense ennui 
and solitude called existence !" 

After Lilian's mother died she had been 
"Papas cherished darling. Then Mr. Share 
caught pneumonia, through devotion to duty and 
died in a few days ; and at last Lilian felt on her 
lovely cheek the winds of the world; at last she 
was free. Of high paternal finance she had never 

[138] 



AUDACIOUS MR. BENNETT 

in her life heard one word. In the week following 
the funeral she learnt that she would be mistress 
of the furniture and a little over one hundred 
pounds net. Mr. Share had illustrated the an- 
cient maxim that it is easier to make money than 
to keep it. He had held shipping shares too long 
and had sold a fully-paid endowment insurance 
policy in the vain endeavour to replace by adven- 
turous investment that which the sea had swal- 
lowed up. And Lilian was helpless. She could 
do absolutely nothing that was worth money. 
She could not begin to earn a livelihood. As for 
relatives, there was only her father's brother, a 
Board School teacher with a large vulgar family 
and an income far too small to permit of generosi- 
ties. Lilian was first incredulous, then horror- 
struck. 

"Leaving the youth of the world to pick up art 
as best it could without him, and fleeing to join 
his wife in paradise, the loving, adoring father 
had in effect abandoned a beautiful idolised 
daughter to the alternatives of starvation or pros- 
titution. He had shackled her wrists behind her 
back and hobbled her feet and bequeathed her to 
wolves. That was what he had done, and what 
many and many such fathers had done, and still 
do, to their idolised daughters. 

"Herein was the root of Lilian's awful burning 
resentment against the whole world, and of a 
fierce and terrible determination by fair means or 
foul to make the world pay. Her soul was a 

[139] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

horrid furnace, and if by chance Lionel Share 
leaned out from the gold bar of heaven and no- 
ticed it, the sight must have turned his thoughts 
towards hell for a pleasant change. She was 
saved from disaster, from martyrdom, from igno- 
miny, from the unnameable, by the merest fluke. 
The nurse who tended Lionel Share's last hours 
was named Grig. This nurse had cousins in the 
typewriting business. She had also a kind heart, 
a practical mind, and a persuasive manner with 
cousins." 

Lilian in the office late at night has been en- 
gaged in conversation by her employer, Mr. Grig, 
and Mr. Grig has finally come to the point. 

" 'You know you've no business in a place like 
this, a girl like you. You're much too highly 
strung for one thing. You aren't like Miss Jack- 
son, for instance. You're simply wasting yourself 
here. Of course you're terribly independent, but 
you do try to please. I don't mean try to please 
merely in your work. You try to please. It's an 
instinct with you. Now in typing you'd never 
beat Miss Jackson. Miss Jackson's only alive, 
really, when she's typing. She types with her 
whole soul. You type well — I hear — but that's 
only because you're clever all round. You'd do 
anything well. You'd milk cows just as well as 
you'd type. But your business is marriage, and a 
good marriage! You're beautiful, and, as I say, 
you have an instinct to please. That's the impor- 
tant thing. You'd make a success of marriage 
[140] 



AUDACIOUS MR. BENNETT 

because of that and because you're adaptable and 
quick at picking up. Most women when they're 
married forget that their job is to adapt them- 
selves and to please. That's their job. They 
expect to be kowtowed to and spoilt and hu- 
moured and to be free to spend money without 
having to earn it, and to do nothing in return ex- 
cept just exist — and perhaps manage a household, 
pretty badly. They seem to forget that there are 
two sides to a bargain. It's dashed hard work, 
pleasing is, sometimes. I know that. But it isn't 
so hard as earning money, believe me ! Now you 
wouldn't be like the majority of women. You'd 
keep your share of the bargain, and handsomely. 
If you don't marry, and marry fifty miles above 
you, you'll be very silly. For you to stop here is 
an outrage against commonsense. It's merely 
monstrous. If I wasn't an old man I wouldn't 
tell you this, naturally. Now you needn't blush. 
I expect I'm not far off thirty years older than you 
— and you're young enough to be wise in time.' " 



in 

It will be seen that Lilian has all the philoso- 
phy and humour which make Mr. Prohack a joy 
forever, and in addition the new novel has the 
strong interest we feel in a young, beautiful, at- 
tractive, helpless girl, who has her way to make 
in the world. And yet, I love Mr. Prohack. I 

[HO 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

think I have by heart some of the wisdom he 
utters; for instance — 

On women: "Even the finest and most agree- 
able women, such as those with whom I have been 
careful to surround myself in my domestic exist- 
ence, are monsters of cruelty. 5 ' 

On women's clubs: "You scarcely ever speak 
to a soul in your club. The food's bad in your 
club. They drink liqueurs before dinner at your 
club. I've seen 'em. Your club's full every night 
of the most formidable spinsters each eating at a 
table alone. Give up your club by all means. 
Set fire to it and burn it down. But don't count 
the act as a renunciation. You hate your club." 

On his wife: "You may annoy me. You may 
exasperate me. You are frequently unspeakable. 
But you have never made me unhappy. And 
why? Because I am one of the few exponents of 
romantic passion left in this city. My passion 
for you transcends my reason. I am a fool, but 
I am a magnificent fool. And the greatest miracle 
of modern times is that after twenty-four years 
of marriage you should be able to give me pleas- 
ure by perching your stout body on the arm of my 
chair as you are doing." 

On his daughter: "In 1917 I saw that girl in 
dirty overalls driving a thundering great van 
down Whitehall. Yesterday I met her in her 
foolish high heels and her shocking openwork 
stockings and her negligible dress and her ex- 
posed throat and her fur stole, and she was so 
[142] 



AUDACIOUS MR. BENNETT 

delicious and so absurd and so futile and so sure 
of her power that — that — well . . . that chit has 
the right to ruin me — not because of anything 
she's done, but because she is." 

On kissing: "That fellow has kissed my daugh- 
ter and he has kissed her for the first time. It is 
monstrous that any girl, and especially my daugh- 
ter, should be kissed for the first time. ... It 
amounts to an outrage." 

On parenthood : "To become a parent is to ac- 
cept terrible risks. I'm Charlie's father. What 
then"? . . . He owes nothing whatever to me or 
to you. If we were starving and he had plenty, he 
would probably consider it his duty to look after 
us; but that's the limit of what he owes us. 
Whereas nothing can put an end to our responsi- 
bility towards him. . . . We thought it would 
be nice to have children and so Charlie arrived. 
He didn't choose his time and he didn't choose his 
character, nor his education, nor his chance. If he 
had his choice you may depend he'd have chosen 
differently. Do you want me, on the top of all 
that, to tell him that he must obediently accept 
something else from us — our code of conduct? It 
would be mere cheek, and with all my shortcom- 
ings I'm incapable of impudence, especially to the 
young." 

On ownership: "Have you ever stood outside 
a money-changer's and looked at the fine collection 
of genuine banknotes in the window? Supposing 
I told you that you could look at them, and enjoy 

[143] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

the sight of them, and nobody could do more? 
No, my boy, to enjoy a thing properly you've got 
to own it. And anybody who says the contrary is 
probably a member of the League of all the Arts." 

On economics: "That's where the honest poor 
have the advantage of us. . . . We're the dis- 
honest poor. . . . We're one vast pretence. . . . 
A pretence resembles a bladder. It may burst. 
We probably shall burst. Still, we have one great 
advantage over the honest poor, who sometimes 
have no income at all ; and also over the rich, who 
never can tell how big their incomes are going to 
be. We know exactly where we are. We know 
to the nearest sixpence." 

On history: "Never yet when empire, any em- 
pire, has been weighed in the balance against a 
young and attractive woman has the young woman 
failed to win ! This is a dreadful fact, but men 
are thus constituted." 

On bolshevism: "Abandon the word 'bolshe- 
vik.' It's a very overworked word and wants a 
long repose." 

iv 

The best brief sketch of Arnold Bennett's life 
that I know of is given in the chapter on Arnold 
Bennett in John W. CunlifTe's English Literature 
During the Last Half Century. Professor Cun- 
liffe, with the aid, of course, of Bennett's own 
story, The Truth About an Author, writes as 
follows : 

[144] 



AUDACIOUS MR. BENNETT 

"He was born near Hanley, the 'Hanbridge' of 
the Five Towns which his novels were to launch 
into literary fame, and received a somewhat lim- 
ited education at the neighbouring 'Middle 
School' of Newcastle, his highest scholastic 
achievement being the passing of the London 
University Matriculation Examination. Some 
youthful adventures in journalism were perhaps 
significant of latent power and literary inclina- 
tion, but a small provincial newspaper offers no 
great encouragement to youthful ambition, and 
Enoch Arnold Bennett (as he was then called) 
made his way at 21 as a solicitor's clerk to Lon- 
don, where he was soon earning a modest liveli- 
hood by 'a natural gift for the preparation of bills 
for taxation.' He had never 'wanted to write' 
(except for money) and had read almost nothing 
of Scott, Jane Austen, Dickens, Thackeray, the 
Brontes, and George Eliot, though he had de- 
voured Ouida, boys' books and serials. His first 
real interest in a book was 'not as an instrument 
for obtaining information or emotion, but as a 
book, printed at such a place in such a year by 
so-and-so, bound by so-and-so, and carrying colo- 
phons, registers, water-marks, and fautes <T im- 
pression.' It was when he showed a rare copy of 
Manon Lescaut to an artist and the latter re- 
marked that it was one of the ugliest books he had 
ever seen, that Bennett, now in his early twenties, 
first became aware of the appreciation of beauty. 
He won twenty guineas in a competition, con- 

[145] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

ducted by a popular weekly, for a humorous 
condensation of a sensational serial, being assured 
that this was 'art/ and the same paper paid him 
a few shillings for a short article on 'How a bill 
of costs is drawn up.' Meanwhile he was 'gorg- 
ing' on English and French literature, his chief 
idols being the brothers de Goncourt, de Maupas- 
sant, and Turgenev, and he got a story into the 
Yellow Book. He saw that he could write, and 
he determined to adopt the vocation of letters. 
After a humiliating period of free lancing in Fleet 
Street, he became assistant editor and later editor 
of Woman. When he was 31, his first novel, 
A Man From the North, was published, both in 
England and America, and with the excess of the 
profits over the cost of typewriting he bought a 
new hat. At the end of the following year he 
wrote in his diary : 

" This year I have written 335,34° words, 
grand total : 224 articles and stories, and four in- 
stalments of a serial called The Gates of Wrath 
have actually been published, and also my book 
of plays, Polite Farces. My work included six 
or eight short stories not yet published, also the 
greater part of a 55,000 word serial Love and 
Life for Tillotsons, and the whole draft, 80,000 
words of my Staffordshire novel Anna Tell- 
wright. 9 

"This last was not published in book form till 
1902 under the title of Anna of the Five Towns; 
but in the ten years that had elapsed since he came 

[146] 



AUDACIOUS MR. BENNETT 

to London, Bennett had risen from a clerk at six 
dollars a week to be a successful 'editor, novelist, 
dramatist, critic, connoisseur of all arts' with a 
comfortable suburban residence. Still he was not 
satisfied; he was weary of journalism and the 
tyranny of his Board of Directors. He threw up 
his editorial post, with its certain income, and 
retired first to the country and then to a cottage 
at Fontainebleau to devote himself to literature. 
"In the autumn of 1903, when Bennett used to 
dine frequently in a Paris restaurant, it happened 
that a fat old woman came in who aroused almost 
universal merriment by her eccentric behaviour. 
The novelist reflected: This woman was once 
young, slim, perhaps beautiful; certainly free 
from these ridiculous mannerisms. Very probably 
she is unconscious of her singularities. Her case 
is a tragedy. One ought to be able to make a 
heart-rending novel out of a woman such as she.' 
The idea then occurred to him of writing the book 
which afterwards became The Old Wives' Tale, 
and in order to go one better than Guy de Mau- 
passant's 'Une Vie' he determined to make it the 
life-history of two women instead of one. Con- 
stance, the more ordinary sister, was the original 
heroine; Sophia, the more independent and at- 
tractive one, was created 'out of bravado.' The 
project occupied Bennett's mind for some years, 
during which he produced five or six novels of 
smaller scope, but in the autumn of 1907 he began 
to write The Old Wives 1 Tale and finished it in 

[147] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

July, 1908. It was published the same autumn, 
and though its immediate reception was not en- 
couraging, before the winter was over it was rec- 
ognised both in England and America as a work 
of genius. The novelist's reputation was upheld, 
if not increased, by the publication of Clayhanger 
in 1910, and in June, 1911, the most conservative 
of American critical authorities, the New York 
Evening Post, could pronounce judgment in these 
terms : 

" 'Mr. Bennett's Bursley is not merely one 
single stupid English provincial town. His 
Baineses and Clayhangers are not simply average 
middle class provincials foredoomed to humdrum 
and the drab shadows of experience. His Bursley 
is every provincial town, his Baineses are all 
townspeople whatsoever under the sun. He pro- 
fesses nothing of the kind ; but with quiet smiling 
patience, with a multitude of impalpable touches, 
clothes his scene and its humble figures in an at- 
mosphere of pity and understanding. These little 
people, he seems to say, are as important to them- 
selves as you are to yourself, or as I am to myself. 
Their strength and weakness are ours; their lives, 
like ours, are rounded with a sleep. And because 
they stand in their fashion for all human charac- 
ter and experience, there is even a sort of beauty 
in them if you will but look for it.' " 



[148] 



AUDACIOUS MR. BENNETT 

Books 
by Arnold Bennett 

Novels: 

A MAN FROM THE NORTH 

THE GRAND BABYLON HOTEL 

THE GATES OF WRATH 

ANNA OF THE FIVE TOWNS 

LEONORA 

HUGO 

A GREAT MAN 

THE BOOK OF CARLOTTA 

WHOM GOD HATH JOINED 

THE OLD ADAM 

BURIED ALIVE 

THE OLD WIVES' TALE 

CLAYHANGER 

DENRY THE AUDACIOUS [III England, THE 

card] 
hilda lessways 

the matador of the five towns 
helen with the high hand 
the glimpse 
the city of pleasure 
these twain 
the lion's share 
the pretty lady 
the roll call 
mr. prohack 

LILIAN 

[H9] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

Plays: 

CUPID AND COMMONSENSE 
WHAT THE PUBLIC WANTS 
THE HONEYMOON 

milestones [With Edward Knoblauch] 

THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

THE TITLE 

JUDITH 

SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE 

THE LOVE MATCH 

Sources 
on Arnold Bennett 

Who's Who [In England]. 
English Literature During the hast Half Century, 
by John W. CunlifTe. the macmillan 

COMPANY. 

Arnold Bennett, A booklet published by george 

H. DORAN COMPANY, I9II. (Out of 

print.) 
The Truth About an Author, by Arnold Bennett. 

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY. 

The Author s Craft, by Arnold Bennett, george 

H. DORAN COMPANY. 

Some Modern Novelists, by Helen Thomas Fol- 
lett and Wilson Follett. henry holt & 

COMPANY. 

Arnold Bennett, by J. F. Harvey Darton, in the 
writers of the day series. 

[150] 



AUDACIOUS MR. BENNETT 

The critical articles on Mr. Bennett and his in- 
dividual books are too numerous to mention. The 
reader is referred to the New York Public Li- 
brary or the Library of Congress, Washington, 
D. C., and to the Annual Index of Periodical 
Publications for the last twenty years. 



[151] 



Chapter X 
A CHAPTER FOR CHILDREN 



I KNOW of only one book which really aids 
parents and others who have to oversee chil- 
dren's reading. That is Annie Carroll Moore's 
invaluable Roads to Childhood. The author, as 
supervisor of work with children in the New York 
Public Library, has had possibly a completer op- 
portunity to understand what children like to read 
and why they like it than any other woman. 
What is more, she has the gift of writing readably 
about both children and books, and an unusual 
faculty for reconciling those somewhat opposite 
poles — things children like to read and the things 
it is well for them to read. 

Miss Moore says that the important thing is a 
discovery of personality in children and a respect 
for their natural inclinations in reading — an early 
and live appreciation of literature and good draw- 
ings is best imparted by exposure rather than by 
insistence upon a too rigid selection. "What I 
like about these papers," said one young mother, 

[152] 



A CHAPTER FOR CHILDREN 

"is that they are good talk. You can pick the 
book up and open it anywhere without following 
a course of reading or instruction to understand 
it. There is full recognition of the fact that 
children are different and react differently to the 
same books at different periods of their develop- 
ment." 

Maude Radford Warren's Tales Told by the 
Gander is one of those books for children that 
adults find interesting, too; and there is a new 
series of children's books by May Byron, concern- 
ing which I must say a few words. The series is 
called "Old Friends in New Frocks" and here are 
a few of the titles : 

Billy Butf s Adventure: The Tale of the Wolf 
and the Goat. 

Little Jumping Joan: The Tale of the Ants and 
the Grasshopper. 

Jack-a-Dandy: The Tale of the Vain Jackdaw. 

These books are noteworthy for their beautiful 
illustrations. Each volume has an inspired and 
fanciful frontispiece in colours by E. J. Detmold 
and line illustrations by Day Hodgetts. More- 
over, there are end papers and the binding has a 
picture in colour that begins on the back and ex- 
tends all the way around in front. Naturally 
they are for very young children — shall we say up 
to seven years old'? 



[153] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

ii 

On April 29, 1922, the Philadelphia Public 
Ledger printed a letter from twelve-year-old 
Marion Kummer, as follows : 

"Dear Mr. Editor: My father asked me to 
write you a story about him and they say at school 
that I am good at stories, so I thought I would. 
I think he thinks I can write and become a great 
writer like him some day, but I would rather be a 
great actress like Leonora Ulrick. I saw her in a 
play where she went to sleep and they stuck pins 
in her but could not wake her up, which part I 
should not like. But at that I would rather be an 
actress because acting is pleasanter and more ex- 
citing and you do not have to write on the type- 
writer all day and get a pain in your back. Daddy 
says he would rather shovel coal but he does not, 
but snow sometimes, which has been very plenti- 
ful about here this winter, also sledding. 

"When he is not working, he goes for a walk 
with the dogs, or tells us most any question we 
should ask almost like an encikelopedia. He is 
very good-natured and I love the things he writes, 
especially plays. Daddy has just finished a chil- 
dren's book called The Earth's Story about how 
it began millions of years ago when there was a 
great many fossils, so nice for children. Also 
about stone axes. My brother Fred made one 
but when he was showing us how it worked the 
head came off and hit me on the foot and I 

[154] 



A CHAPTER FOR CHILDREN 

kicked him. So stone axes were one of the man's 
first weapons. Daddy read us each chapter 
when it was done and we helped him except baby 
brother who wrote with red crayon all over one 
chapter when no one was there, and he should not 
have been in Daddy's office anyway. Daddy has 
to draw horses and engines for him all the time. 
He gets tired of it but what can he doT' 

Now this is very pleasant, for here on the table 
is the first volume of The Earth's Story — The 
First Days of Man by Frederic Arnold Kummer; 
and this book for children has a preface for par- 
ents in it. In that preface Mr. Kummer says : 

"In this process of storing away in his brain 
the accumulated knowledge of the ages the child's 
mind passes, with inconceivable rapidity, along 
the same route that the composite minds of his 
ancestors travelled, during their centuries of de- 
velopment. The impulse that causes him to want 
to hunt, to fish, to build brush huts, to camp out 
in the woods, to use his hands as well as his brain, 
is an inheritance from the past, when his primi- 
tive ancestors did these things. He should be 
helped to trace the route they followed with in- 
telligence and understanding, he should be en- 
couraged to know the woods, and all the great 
world of out-of-doors, to make and use the primi- 
tive weapons, utensils, toys, his ancestors made 
and used, to come into closer contact with the 
fundamental laws of nature, and thus to lay a 
groundwork for wholesome and practical thinking 

[155] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

which cannot be gained in the classroom or the 
city streets. 

"As has been said, the writer has tested the 
methods outlined above. The chapters in The 
First Days of Man are merely the things he has 
told his own children. It is of interest to note 
that one of these, a boy of seven, on first going to 
school, easily outstripped in a single month a 
dozen or more children who had been at school 
almost a year, and was able to enter a grade a full 
year ahead of them. The child in question is not 
in the least precocious, but having understood the 
knowledge he has gained, he is able to make use 
of it, he has a definite mental perspective, a sure 
grasp on things, which makes study of any kind 
easy for him, and progression correspondingly 
rapid." 

To say that Jungle Tales, Adventures in India, 
by Howard Anderson Musser is a series of mis- 
sionary tales of adventure in India, is to give no 
idea of the thrills within its covers. There are 
fights with tigers, bears and bandits, and there is 
one long fight against ignorance and disease, su- 
perstition and merciless greed. And the fighter? 
He was an American athlete, who had won honour 
on the track and football field. Great for boys! 

iii 

The English Who' s Who says : 
"Colonel Stevenson Lyle Cummins" — then fol- 
lows a string of degrees — "David Davies Pro- 

[156] 



A CHAPTER FOR CHILDREN 

fessor of Tuberculosis, University College, South 
Wales, Monmouthshire, and Principal Medical 
Officer to the King Edward VII. Welsh National 
Memorial Association since 1921. . . . Entered 
Army 1897; Captain, 1900; Major, 1909; Lieu- 
tenant-Colonel, 1915; Colonel, 1918; served Nile 
Expedition, 1898 (medal with clasp, despatches) ; 
Sudan 1900, 1902; Sudan, 1904 (Clasp); Osma- 
nieh 4th class, 1907; European War, 1914-18 
(C.B., C.M.G., despatches six times, Brevetted 
Colonel) ; Legion of Honour (Officer), Couronne 
de Belgique (Officer) ; Col. 1918; Croix de Guerre 
(Belgian), 1918, retired from Army, 1921." 

But I don't suppose that it was as a consequence 
of anything in that honourable record that Colo- 
nel Cummins wrote Plays for Children, in three 
volumes. I suppose it was in consequence of an- 
other fact which the English Who's Who men- 
tions (very briefly and abbreviatedly) as "four c" 

The possession of four children is a natural ex- 
planation of three volumes of juvenile plays. 

But wait a moment! Did Colonel Cummins 
write them wholly for his youngsters^ As I read 
these little plays, it seems to me that there is fre- 
quently an undercurrent of philosophy, truth, 
satire — what you will — which, unappreciated by 
the youngsters themselves, will make these house- 
hold dramas ingratiating to their parents. At any 
rate, this is exceptional work; you may be sure it 
is, for publishers are not in the habit of bringing 
out an author's three volumes of children's plays 

[157] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

all at one stroke, and that is what is happening 
with Colonel Cummins' s little dramas. 

What is there to say in advance about The 
Fairy Flute, by Rose Fyleman*? No one of the 
increasing number who have read her utterly 
charming book of poems for children, Fairies and 
Chimneys, will need more than the breath that 
this book is coming. I shall give myself (and I 
think everyone who reads this) the pleasure of 
quoting a poem from Fairies and Chimneys. This 
will show those who do not know the work of 
Rose Fyleman what to expect: 

PEACOCKS 

Peacocks sweep the fairies' rooms; 
They use their folded tails for brooms; 
But fairy dust is brighter far 
Than any mortal colours are; 
And all about their tails it clings 
In strange designs of rounds and rings; 
And that is why they strut about 
And proudly spread their feathers out. 



IV 

Francis Rolt-Wheeler has spent years at sea, 
travelled a great deal in the West Indies, and 
South America, trapped at Hudson Bay, punched 
cattle in the far West, lived in mining camps, 
traversed the greater part of the American conti- 
nent on horseback, lived with the Indians of the 
plains and lived with the Indians of the Pueblos, 

[158] 



A CHAPTER FOR CHILDREN 

was a journalist for several years, has been in 
nearly every country of the world, and when last 
heard from (May, 1922) was meandering through 
Spain on his way to Morocco intending to take 
journeys on mule-back among the wild tribes of 
the Riff. He is studying Arabic and Mohamme- 
dan customs to prepare himself for this latest ad- 
venture. He writes boys' books. 

Can he write boys' books? If a man of his ex- 
perience cannot write boys' books, then boys' 
books are hopeless. 

Plotting in Pirate Seas, besides the thrill of 
the story relating Stuart Garfield's adventures 
in Haiti, contains glimpses of the whole pageant 
we call "the history of the Spanish Main." There 
is a chapter which gives an account of Teach and 
Blackbeard, the buccaneers. Other chapters offer 
natural history in connection with Stuart Gar- 
field's hunt for his father. The boy gets an 
inside view of newspaper work and a clear idea of 
native life in Haiti and of conditions which 
brought about American intervention on the 
island. 

Hunting Hidden Treasure in the Andes is, ex- 
plicitly, the story of Julio and his guidance of two 
North American boys to the buried treasure of the 
Incas; but the book is much more than that. It 
gives, with accuracy and exceptional interest, a 
panorama of South American civilisation. 

These are the first two volumes of the "Boy 
Journalist Series." Two other books, the first 

[159] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

two volumes in the series called "Romance- 
History of America," are : 

In the Days Before Columbus, which deals with 
the North America that every youngster wants to 
know about — a continent flung up from the 
ocean's bed and sculptured by ice; a continent 
that was kept hidden for centuries from European 
knowledge by the silent sweep of ocean currents; 
a continent that developed civilisations compara- 
ble with the Phoenician and Egyptian; the conti- 
nent of the Red Man. The book places what we 
customarily call "American History" in its proper 
perspective by hanging behind it the stupendous 
backdrop of creation and the prehistoric time. 

The Quest of the Western World is not the 
usual story of Columbus, preceded by a few allu- 
sions to the adventurings of earlier navigators. 
Dr. Rolt- Wheeler has written a book which goes 
back to the days of Tyre and Sidon, which in- 
cludes the core of the old Norse and Irish sagas, 
and which comes down to Columbus with all the 
rich tapestry of a daring past unrolled before the 
youthful reader. Nor does the author stand on 
the letter of his title; he tells the story of the 
Quest both backward and forward, tying up the 
past with the present and avoiding, with singular 
success, the fatal effect which makes a child feel : 
"All this was a long time ago; it hasn't anything 
to do with me or to-day." 

And now two new Rolt-Wheeler books are 
ready ! Heroes of the Ruins, the third volume of 

[160] 



A CHAPTER FOR CHILDREN 

the "Boy Journalist Series," tells of a fourteen- 
year-old who lived for four years of war in 
trenches and dugouts. Andre, the Mole, went 
from one company to another, dodged the authori- 
ties and successfully ran the risks of death, 
emerging at the end to take up the search for his 
scattered family, from whom he had been sepa- 
rated in the early days of the fighting. 

The third volume in the "Romance-History of 
America" books is The Coming of the Peoples, 
which tells how the French, Spanish, English and 
Dutch settled early America. 



Olive Roberts Barton is a sister of Mary Rob- 
erts Rinehart. When she taught school in Pitts- 
burgh for several years before her marriage, she 
worked with children of all sizes and ages during 
part of that time and found small children were 
her specialty. She says: 

"Working with them, and giving out constantly 
as one must with small children, was like casting 
bread upon waters. It came back to me, what I 
was giving them, not after many days but at once ; 
their appreciation, their spontaneous sympathy, 
their love gave to me something I could get no- 
where else, and it was enriching. I felt then, as I 
still feel, that children give us the best things the 
world has to offer, and my effort has been to make 
some return. Twice during the crises in my mar- 

[161] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

ried life I went back to the schoolroom for com- 
fort. Once after the death of one of my own 
children, when I had no others left, and again 
when my husband went to the battle-fields of 
France. 

"I have written with the same experience as I 
taught. My first successes were with adult fiction. 
I have had something like six hundred short sto- 
ries published by syndicates, and magazine arti- 
cles have appeared from time to time, but gradu- 
ally I realised that I wanted children for my au- 
dience. Several years ago I published Cloud Boat 
Stories. Later The Wonderful Land of Up. A 
syndicate editor saw these books and asked me to 
start a children's department for the five hundred 
papers he served. That was the beginning of the 
'Twins.' Nancy and Nick were born two years 
ago. They still visit their little friends every 
day in the columns of many newspapers. What 
a vast audience I have ! A million children ! No 
wonder one wishes to do his best. 

"I have two children of my own. They are my 
critics. What they do not like, I do not write. 
We all love the out-of-doors and to us a bird or a 
little wild animal is a fairy." 

But when I try to say something about the 
Nancy and Nick series I find it has all been said 
for me (and said so much better!) by that accom- 
plished bookseller, Candace T. Stevenson: 

"I have just finished all of the books by Olive 
Roberts Barton. They are truly spontaneous and 
'[162] 



A CHAPTER FOR CHILDREN 

delightful. In fact, they have carried my small 
group of children listeners and myself along as 
breathlessly as if they were Alice in Wonderland 
or Davy and the Goblin. They are delightful 
nonsense with exactly the right degree of an un- 
dercurrent of ideas which they can make use of in 
their business of everyday living. Children love 
morals which are done as skilfully as the chapter 
on Examinations in Helter Skelter Land, and 
Sammy Jones, the Topsy Turvy Boy in Topsy 
Turvy Land, and I found my group not only seri- 
ously discussing them but putting them into prac- 
tice. Speaking of putting things into practice, 
there is only one spot in all of the books which 
seemed to me as if it might get some children into 
trouble. The description of Waspy Weasel's 
trick on the schoolmaster in Helter Skelter Land 
where he squeezes bittersweet juice into the 
schoolmaster's milk and puts him to sleep, I think 
would lead any inquiring mind to try it. 

"The whale who loved peppermints, Torty 
Turtle with his seagull's wings on, the adventures 
of the children when they help Mr. Tingaling col- 
lect the rents — this isn't the same old stuff of the 
endless 'bedtime' stories which are dealt out to us 
by the yard. These animals are real people with 
the tinge which takes real imagination to paint. 

"At first I was disappointed in the pictures, but 
as I read on I came to like those also, and I found 
that they were wholly satisfactory to the children. 
The picture of the thousand legger with all his 

[163] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

shoes on is entrancing, and poor Mrs. Frog cutting 
out clothes because the dressmaker had made them 
for the children when they were still tadpoles. 
These books ought to come like an oasis in the 
desert to the poor-jaded-reading-aloud-parent." 



At Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania, in a small 
house built from her own plans and standing 
2,000 feet above sea level, in a growing shade of 
trees, lives Marion Ames Taggart, author of the 
Jack-in-the-Box series — four children's books that 
renew their popularity every year. They are : 

AT GREENACRES 

THE QUEER LITTLE MAN 

THE BOTTLE IMP 

poppy's PLUCK 

At Greenacres and The Queer Little Man are 
particularly good to read aloud to a group of chil- 
dren; they really are the mystery and detective 
story diluted for children. 

Miss Taggart, an only child and extremely frail 
in childhood, had the good fortune as a conse- 
quence of ill-health to be educated entirely at 
home. As a result she had free access to really 
good books — for the home was in Haverhill, 
Mass. She began to carry out a cherished wish to 
write for young girls in 1901, when her first book 
(for girls of about sixteen) was published in St. 

[164] 



A CHAPTER FOR CHILDREN 

Nicholas. She has a habit of transplanting four- 
footed friends in her stories under their own 
names — as where, in the Jack-in-the-Box series, 
one finds Pincushion, Miss Taggart's own plump 
grey kitten. 

What will the children say to A Wonder Book, 
by Nathaniel Hawthorne, with pictures in color 
by Arthur Rackham'? I do not know why I ask 
this rhetorical question, which, like most questions 
of the sort, should be followed by exclamation 
points ! There will be exclamations, at any rate, 
over this book, surely the most beautiful of the 
year, perhaps of several years. The quality of 
Arthur Rackham's work is well known, its artistic 
value is undisputedly of the very highest. And 
Hawthorne's text — the story of the Gorgon's 
head, the tale of Midas, Tanglewood, and the 
rest — is of the finest literary, poetic and imagina- 
tive worth. 



[165] 



Chapter XI 
COBB'S FOURTH DIMENSION 



AS a three-dimensional writer, Irvin S. Cobb 
has long been among the American literary 
heavy-weights. Now that he has acquired a 
fourth dimension, the time has come for a new 
measurement of his excellences as an author. 

Among those excellences I know a man (re? fu- 
sible for the manufacture of Doran books) .o 
holds that Cobb is the greatest living Ame can 
author. The reason for this is severely logical, 
to wit : Irvin Cobb always sends in his copy in a 
perfect condition. His copy goes to the manufac- 
turer of books with a correctly written title page, 
a correctly written copyright page, the exact word- 
ing of the dedication, an accurate table of con- 
tents, and so on, all the way through the manu- 
script. Moreover, when proofs are sent to Mr. 
Cobb, he makes very few changes. He reduces to 
a minimum the difficulties of a printer and his 
changes are always perceptibly changes for the 
better. 

But I don't suppose that any of this would re- 

[166] 




IRVIN S. COBB 



[167] 



COBB'S FOURTH DIMENSION 

dound to Cobb's credit in the eyes of a literary 
critic. 

And to return to the subject of the fourth di- 
mension: My difficulty is to know in just what 
direction that fourth dimension lies. Is the fourth 
dimension of Cobb as a novelist or as an auto- 
biographer? It puzzles me to tell inasmuch as 
I have before me the manuscripts of Mr. Cobb's 
first novel, J. Poindexter, Colored, and his very 
first autobiography, a volume called Stickfuls. 

The title of Stickfuls will probably not be 
charged with meaning to people unfamiliar with 
newspaper work. Perhaps it is worth while to 
explain that in the old days, when type was set 
by hand, the printer had a little metal holder 
called a "stick." When he had set a dozen lines 
— more or less — he had a "stickful." Although 
very little type is now set by hand, the stick as a 
measure of space is still in good standing. The 
reporter presents himself at the city desk, tells 
what he has got, and is told by the city editor, 
"Write a stickful." Or, "Write two sticks." 
And so on. 

Stickfuls is not so much the story of Cobb's life 
as the story of people he has met and places he has 
been, told in a series of extremely interesting 
chapters — told in a leisurely and delightful 
fashion of reminiscence by a natural association 
of one incident with another and one person with 
someone else. For example, Cobb as a newspaper 
man, covered a great many trials in court; and 

[169] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

one of the chapters of Stickfuls tells of famous 
trials he has attended. 



11 

Now about this novel of Cobb's: Jeff Poin- 
dexter will be remembered by all the readers of 
Mr. Cobb's short stories as the negro body servant 
of old Judge Priest. In J. Poindexter, Colored, 
we have Jeff coming to New York. Of course, 
New York seen through the eyes of a genuine 
Southern darkey is a New York most of us have 
never seen. There's nothing like sampling, so I 
will let you begin the book : 

"My name is J. Poindexter. But the full name 
is Jefferson Exodus Poindexter, Colored. But 
most always in general I has been known as Jeff 
for short. The Jefferson part is for a white family 
which my folks worked for them one time before 
I was born, and the Exodus is because my mammy 
craved I should be named after somebody out of 
the Bible. How I comes to write this is this way : 

"It seems like my experiences here in New York 
is liable to be such that one of my white gentleman 
friends he says to me I should take pen in hand 
and write them out just the way they happen and 
at the time they is happening, or right soon after- 
wards, whilst the memory of them is clear in my 
brain; and then he's see if he can't get them 
printed somewheres, which on the top of the other 
things which I now is, will make me an author 
[170] 



COBB'S FOURTH DIMENSION 

with money coming in steady. He says to me he 
will fix up the spelling wherever needed and at- 
tend to the punctuating; but all the rest of it will 
be my own just like I puts it down. I reads and 
writes very well but someway I never learned to 
puncture. So the places where it is necessary to 
be punctual in order to make good sense and keep 
everything regulation and make the talk sound 
natural is his doings and also some of the spelling. 
But everything else is mine and I asks credit. 

"My coming to New York, in the first place, is 
sort of a sudden thing which starts here about a 
month before the present time. I has been work- 
ing for Judge Priest for going on sixteen years and 
is expecting to go on working for him as long as we 
can get along together all right, which it seems 
like from appearances that ought to be always. 
But after he gives up being circuit judge on ac- 
count of him getting along so in age he gets sort 
of fretful by reasons of him not having much to 
do any more and most of his own friends having 
died off on him. When the State begins going 
Republican about once in so often, he says to me, 
kind of half joking, he's a great mind to pull up 
stakes and move off and go live somewheres else. 
But pretty soon after that the whole country goes 
dry and then he says to me there just naturally 
ain't no fitten place left for him to go without he 
leaves the United States." 

It seems that Judge Priest finally succumbed to 
an invitation to visit Bermuda, a place where a 

[171] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

gentleman can still raise a thirst and satisfy it. 
Jeff could not stand the house without the Judge 
in it ; and when an opportunity came to go to New 
York, Jeff went. 



in 

The biographer of Cobb is Robert H. Davis, 
editor of Munsey's Magazine, whose authorita- 
tive account I take pleasure in reprinting here — 
the more so because it appeared some time ago in 
a booklet which is now out of print. Mr. Davis's 
article was first printed in The Sun, New York: 

"Let me deal with this individual in a cate- 
gorical way. Most biographers prefer to mutilate 
their canvas with a small daub which purports to 
be a sketch of the most significant event in the life 
of the accused. Around this it is their custom to 
paint smaller and less impressive scenes, blending 
the whole by placing it in a large gilded frame, 
which, for obvious reasons, costs more than the 
picture — and it is worth more. Pardon me, 
therefore, if I creep upon Mr. Cobb from the 
lower left-hand corner of the canvas and chase 
him across the open space as rapidly as possible. 
It is not for me to indicate when the big events 
in his life will occur or to lay the milestones of the 
route along which he will travel. I know only 
that they are in the future, and that, regardless of 
any of his achievements in the past, Irvin Cobb 
has not yet come into his own. 

[172] 



COBB'S FOURTH DIMENSION 

"The first glimpse I had of him was in a half- 
tone portrait in the New York Evening World 
five years ago. This picture hung pendant-like 
from a title which read 'Through Funny Glasses, 
by Irvin S. Cobb.' It was the face of a man 
scarred with uncertainty; an even money propo- 
sition that he had either just emerged from the 
Commune or was about to enter it. Grief was 
written on the brow; more than written, it was 
emblazoned. The eyes were heavy with inex- 
pressible sadness. The corners of the mouth were 
drooped, heightening the whole effect of incom- 
prehensible depression. Quickly I turned to the 
next page among the stock quotations, where I got 
my depression in a blanket form. The concen- 
trated Cobb kind was too much for me. 

"A few days later I came suddenly upon the 
face again. The very incongruity of its alliance 
with laughter overwhelmed me, and wonderingly 
I read what he had written, not once, but every 
day, always with the handicap of that half-tone. 
If Cobb were an older man, I would go on the wit- 
ness stand and swear that the photograph was 
made when he was witnessing the Custer Massa- 
cre or the passing of Geronimo through the winter 
quarters of his enemies. Notwithstanding, he 
supplied my week's laughter. 

"Digression this: 

"After Bret Harte died, many stories were writ- 
ten by San Franciscans who knew him when he 
first put in an appearance on the Pacific Coast. 

[173] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

One contemporary described minutely how Bret 
would come silently up the stairs of the old Alta 
office, glide down the dingy hallway through the 
exchange room, and seat himself at the now his- 
toric desk. It took Bret fifteen minutes to sharpen 
a lead pencil, one hour for sober reflection, and 
three hours to write a one-stick paragraph, after 
which he would carefully tear it up, gaze out of 
the window down the Golden Gate, and go home. 

"He repeated this formula the following day, 
and at the end of the week succeeded in turning 
out three or four sticks which he considered fit to 
print. In later years, after fame had sought him 
out and presented him with a fur-lined overcoat, 
which I am bound to say Bret knew how to wear, 
the files of the Alta were ransacked for the pearls 
he had dropped in his youth. A few gems were 
identified, a very few. Beside this entire printed 
collection the New England Primer would have 
looked like a set of encyclopedias. Bret worked 
slowly, methodically, brilliantly, and is an im- 
perishable figure in American letters. 

"Returning to Cobb: He has already written 
twenty times more than Bret Harte turned out 
during his entire career. He has made more peo- 
ple laugh and written better short stories. He has 
all of Harte's subtle and delicate feeling, and 
will, if he is spared, write better novels about the 
people of today than Bret Harte, with all his 
genius and imagination, wrote around the Pio- 
neers. I know of no single instance where one 

[174] 



COBB'S FOURTH DIMENSION 

man has shown such fecundity and quality as Irvin 
Cobb has so far evinced, and it is my opinion that 
his complete works at fifty will contain more good 
humour, more good short stories, and at least one 
bigger novel than the works of any other single 
contemporaneous figure. 

"He was born in Paducah, Kentucky, in June, 
'76. I have taken occasion to look into the matter 
and find that his existence was peculiarly varied. 
He belonged to one of those old Southern families 
— there being no new Southern families — and 
passed through the public schools sans incident. 
At the age of sixteen he went into the office 
of The Paducah Daily News as a reportorial 
cub. 

"He was first drawn to daily journalism be- 
cause he yearned to be an illustrator. Indeed, he 
went so far as to write local humorous stories, 
illustrating them himself. The pictures must 
have been pretty bad, although they served to 
keep people from saying that his literature was 
the worst thing in the paper. 

"Resisting all efforts of the editor, the stock- 
holders and the subscribers of The Paducah Daily 
News, he remained barricaded behind his desk 
until his nineteenth year, when he was crowned 
with a two-dollar raise and a secondary caption 
under his picture which read 'The Youngest 
Managing Editor of a Daily Paper in the United 
States.' 

"If Cobb was consulted in the matter of this 

[175] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

review, he would like to have these preliminaries 
expunged from his biography. But the public is 
entitled to the details. 

"It is also true that he stacked up more libel 
suits than a newspaper of limited capital with a 
staff of local attorneys could handle before he 
moved to Louisville, where, for three years, he 
was staff correspondent of The Evening Post. It 
was here that Cobb discovered how far a humorist 
could go without being invited to step out at 6 
a.m. and rehearse 'The Rivals' with real horse- 
pistols. 

"The first sobering episode in his life occurred 
when the Goebel murder echoed out of Louisville. 
He reported this historic assassination and cov- 
ered the subsequent trials in the Georgetown court 
house. Doubtless the seeds of tragedy, which 
mark some of his present work, were sown here. 
Those who are familiar with his writings know 
that occasionally he sets his cap and bells aside 
and dips his pen into the very darkness of life. 
We find it particularly in three of his short sto- 
ries entitled 'An Occurrence Up a Side Street,' 
'The Belled Buzzard,' and 'Fishhead.' Nothing 
better can be found in Edgar Allan Poe's collected 
works. One is impressed not only with the beauty 
and simplicity of his prose, but with the tremen- 
dous power of his tragic conceptions and his art 
in dealing with terror. There appears to be no 
phase of human emotion beyond his pen. With- 
out an effort he rises from the level of actualities 

[i 7 6] 



COBB'S FOURTH DIMENSION 

to the high plane of boundless imagination, in- 
voking laughter or tears at will. 

"After his Louisville experience Cobb married 
and returned to Paducah to be managing editor of 
The Democrat. Either Paducah or The Demo- 
crat got on his nerves and, after a comparison of 
the Paducah school of journalism with the metro- 
politan brand, he turned his face (see Evening 
World half-tone) in the direction of New York, 
buoyed up by the illusion that he was needed there 
along with other reforms. 

"He arrived at the gates of Manhattan full of 
hope, and visited every newspaper office in New 
York without receiving encouragement to call 
again. Being resourceful he retired to his suite of 
hall bedrooms on 57th Street West and wrote a 
personal note to every city editor in New York, 
setting forth in each instance the magnificent in- 
tellectual proportions of the epistolographer. The 
next morning, by mail, Cobb had offers for a job 
from five of them. He selected The Evening Sun. 

"At about that time the Portsmouth Peace Con- 
ference convened, and The Sun sent the Paducah 
party to help cover the proceedings. Upon arriv- 
ing at Portsmouth, Cobb cast his experienced eye 
over the situation, discovered that the story was 
already well covered by a large coterie of compe- 
tent, serious-minded young men, and went into 
action to write a few columns daily on subjects 
having no bearing whatsoever on the conference. 
These stories were written in the ebullition of 

[177] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

youth, inspired by the ecstasy which rises from 
the possession of a steady job; a perfect deluge 
from the well springs of spontaneity. There 
wasn't a single fact in the entire series, and yet 
The Sun syndicated these stories throughout the 
United States. All they possessed was I-N-D-I- 
V-I-D-U-A-L-I-T-Y. 

"At the end of three weeks, Cobb returned to 
New York, to find that he could have a job on any 
newspaper in it. This brings him to The Evening 
World, the half-tone engraving, which was the 
first glimpse I had of him, and the dawn of his 
subsequent triumphs. For four years he supplied 
the evening edition and The Sunday World with 
a comic feature, to say nothing of a comic opera, 
written to order in five days. The absence of a 
guillotine in New York State accounts for his 
escape for this latter offence. Nevertheless, in all 
else his standard of excellence ascended. He re- 
ported the Thaw trial in long-hand, writing nearly 
600,000 words of testimony and observation, es- 
tablishing a new style for reporting trials, and 
gave further evidence of his power. That per- 
formance will stand out in the annals of Ameri- 
can journalism as one of the really big reportorial 
achievements. 

"At about this juncture in his career Cobb 
opened a door to the past, reached in and took 
out some of the recollections of his youth. These 
he converted into 'The Escape of Mr. Trimm/ 
his first short fiction story. It appeared in The 

[178] 



COBB'S FOURTH DIMENSION 

Saturday Evening Post. The court scene was 
so absolutely true to life, so minutely perfect 
in its atmosphere, that a Supreme Court judge 
signed an unsolicited and voluntary note for pub- 
lication, in which he said that Mr. Cobb had re- 
ported with marvelous accuracy and fulness a 
murder trial at which His Honour had presided. 

"Gelett Burgess, in a lecture at Columbia Col- 
lege, said that Cobb was one of the ten great 
American humourists. Cobb ought to demand a 
recount. There are not ten humourists in the 
world, although Cobb is one of them. The ex- 
traordinary thing about Cobb is that he can turn 
a burst of laughter into a funeral oration, a 
snicker into a shudder and a smile into a crime. 
He writes in octaves, striking instinctively all the 
chords of humour, tragedy, pathos and romance 
with either hand. Observe this man in his thirty- 
ninth year, possessing gifts the limitations of 
which even he himself has not yet recognised. 

"In appraising a genius, we must consider the 
man's highest achievement, and in comparing him 
with others the verdict must be reached only upon 
consideration of his best work. For scintillant 
wit and unflagging good humour, read his essays 
on the Teeth, the Hair and the Stomach. If you 
desire a perfect blending of all that is essential 
to a short story, read 'The Escape of Mr. Trimm' 
or 'Words and Music.' If you are in search of 
pure, unadulterated, boundless terror, the grue- 
some quality, the blackness of despair and the fear 

[179] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

of death in the human, conscience, 'Fishhead,' 
The Belled Buzzard' or 'An Occurrence Up a 
Side Street' will enthrall you. 

'Thus in Irvin Cobb we find Mark Twain, Bret 
Harte and Edgar Allan Poe at their best. Reckon 
with these potentialities in the future. Speculate, 
if you will, upon the sort of a novel that is bound, 
some day, to come from his pen. There seem to 
be no pinnacles along the horizon of the literary 
future that are beyond him. If he uses his pen 
for an Alpine stock, the Matterhorn is his. 

"There are critics and reviewers who do not 
entirely agree with me concerning Cobb. But 
they will. 

"As I write these lines I recall a conversation I 
had with Irvin Cobb on the hurricane deck of a 
Fifth Avenue 'bus one bleak November afternoon, 
1911. We had met at the funeral of Joseph Pu- 
litzer, in whose employ we had served in the past. 

"Cobb was in a reflective mood, chilled to the 
marrow, and not particularly communicative. 

"At the junction of Fifth Avenue and Forty- 
second Street we were held up by congested traffic. 
After a little manoeuvring on the part of a 
mounted policeman, the Fifth Avenue tide flowed 
through and onward again. 

" 'It reminds me of a river,' said Cobb, 'into 
which all humanity is drawn. Some of these peo- 
ple think because they are walking up-stream they 
are getting out of it. But they never escape. The 
current is at work on them. Some day they will 

[180] 



COBB'S FOURTH DIMENSION 

get tired and go down again, and finally pass out 
to sea. It is the same with real rivers. They do 
not flow up-hill.' 

"He lapsed into silence. 

" 'What's on your mind*?' I inquired. 

" 'Nothing in particular/ he said, scanning the 
banks of the great municipal stream, 'except that 
I intend to write a novel some day about a boy 
born at the headwaters. Gradually he floats down 
through the tributaries, across the valleys, swings 
into the main stream, and docks finally at one of 
the cities on its banks. This particular youth was 
a great success — in the beginning. Every door 
was open to him. He had position, brains, and 
popularity to boot. He married brilliantly. And 
then The Past, a trivial, unimportant Detail, 
lifted its head and barked at him. He was too 
sensitive to bark back. Thereupon it bit him and 
he collapsed.' 

"Again Cobb ceased talking. For some reason 
— indefinable — I respected his silence. Two 
blocks further down he took up the thread of his 
story again: 

" ' — and one evening, just about sundown, a 
river hand, sitting on a stringpiece of a dock, saw 
a derby hat bobbing in the muddy Mississippi, 
floating unsteadily but surely into the Gulf of 
Mexico.' 

"As is his habit, Cobb tugged at his lower lip. 

" 'What are you going to call this novel ?' 

" T don't know. What do you think? 

[181] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

"'Why not "The River"? 

" 'Very well, I'll call it "The River." ' 

"He scrambled from his seat. Tm docking at 
Twenty-seventh Street. Good-bye. Keep your 
hat out of the water.' 

"Laboriously he made his way down the 
winding staircase from the upper deck, dropped 
flat-footed on the asphalt pavement, turned his 
collar up, leaned into the gust of wind from the 
South, and swung into the cross-current of an- 
other stream. 

"I doubt if he has any intention of calling his 
story The River/ But I am sure the last chapter 
will contain something about an unhappy wretch 
who wore a derby hat at the moment he walked 
hand in hand with his miserable Past into the 
Father of Waters. 

"For those who wish to know something of his 
personal side, I can do no better than to record 
his remarks to a stranger, who, in my presence, 
asked Irvin Cobb, without knowing to whom he 
was speaking, what kind of a person Cobb was. 

" 'Well, to be perfectly frank with you,' re- 
plied the Paducah prodigy, 'Cobb is related to 
my wife by marriage, and if you don't object to a 
brief sketch, with all the technicalities eliminated, 
I should say in appearance he is rather bulky, 
standing six feet high, not especially beautiful, a 
light roan in colour, with a black mane. His fig- 
ure is undecided, but might be called bunchy in 
places. He belongs to several clubs, including 

[182] 



COBB'S FOURTH DIMENSION 

The Yonkers Pressing Club and The Park Hill 
Democratic Marching Club, and has always, like 
his father, who was a Confederate soldier, voted 
the Democratic ticket. He has had one wife and 
one child and still has them. In religion he is an 
Innocent Bystander.' 

"Could anything be fuller than this?' 



IV 



It was Mr. Davis, also, who in the New York 
Herald of April 23, 1922, made public the evi- 
dence for the following box score : 

1st 2nd 

Best Writer of Humour Cobb 

Best All-Round Reporter. . . . Cobb 

Best Local Colourist Cobb 

Best in Tales of Horror Cobb 

Best Writer of Negro Stories Cobb 

Best Writer of Light Cobb and 

Humorous Fiction Tarkington Harry Leon 

Wilson 

Best Teller of Anecdotes Cobb Cobb 

"Not long ago a group of ten literary men — 
editors, critics, readers and writers — were dining 
together. Discussion arose as to the respective 
and comparative merits of contemporaneous pop- 
ular writers. It was decided that each man pres- 
ent should set down upon a slip of paper his first, 

[183] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

second and third choices in various specified but 
widely diversified fields of literary endeavour, and 
that then the results should be compared. Ad- 
mirers of Cobb's work will derive a peculiar sat- 
isfaction from the outcome. It was found that as 
a writer of humour he had won first place ; that as 
an all round reporter he had first place; that as a 
handler of local colour in the qualified sense of a 
power of apt, swiftly-done, journalistic descrip- 
tion, he had first place. He also had first place as 
a writer of horror yarns. He won second place 
as a writer of darkey stories. He tied with Harry 
Leon Wilson for second place as a writer of light 
humorous fiction, Tarkington being given first 
place in this category. As a teller of anecdotes he 
won by acclamation over all contenders. Alto- 
gether his name appeared on eight of the ten lists." 
Cobb lives at Ossining, New York. He de- 
scribes himself as lazy, but convinces no one. He 
likes to go fishing. But he has never written any 
fish stories. 

Books 
by Irvin S. Cobb 

BACK HOME 

cobb's ANATOMY 

THE ESCAPE OF MR. TRIMM 

cobb's BILL OF FARE 

ROUGHING IT DE LUXE 

EUROPE REVISED 

[184] 



COBB'S FOURTH DIMENSION 

paths of glory 

old judge priest 

fibble, d.d. 

speaking of operations 

local color 

speaking of prussians 

those times and these 

the glory of the coming 

the thunders of silence 

the life of the party 

from place to place 

"oh, well, you know how women are!" 

the abandoned farmers 

sundry accounts 

a plea for old cap collier 

one third off 

eating in two or three languages 

j. poindexter, colored 

stickfuls 



Plays: 



FUNABASHI 
BUSYBODY 
BACK HOME 
SERGEANT BAGBY 
GUILTY AS CHARGED 
UNDER SENTENCE 



[185] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

Sources 
on Irvin S. Cobb 

Who's Who in America. 

Who' s Cobb and Why? Booklet published by 

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY. (Out of print) . 

Article by Robert H. Davis in the book section 

of THE NEW YORK HERALD for April 23, 

1922. 
Robert H. Davis, 280 Broadway, New York. 



[186] 



Chapter XII 
PLACES TO GO 



THE book by Thomas Burke called More 
Limehouse Nights was published in Eng- 
land under the title of Whispering Windows. At 
the time of its publication, Mr. Burke wrote the 
following : 

"The most disconcerting question that an 
author can be asked, and often is asked, is : 'Why- 
did you write that book'?' The questioners do not 
want an answer to that immediate question; but 
to the implied question: 'Why don't you write 
some other kind of book?' To either question 
there is but one answer: because. 

"Every writer is thus challenged. The writer 
of comic stories is asked why he doesn't write 
something really serious. The novelist is asked 
why he doesn't write short stories, and the short- 
story writer is asked why he doesn't write a novel. 
To me people say, impatiently: 'Why don't you 
write happy stories about ordinary people?' And 
the only answer I can give them is: 'Because I 
can't. I present life as I see it.' 

"I am an ordinary man, but I don't understand 

[187] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

ordinary men. I am at a loss with them. But 
with the people of whom I write I have a fellow- 
feeling. I know them and their sorrows and their 
thwarted strivings and I understand their aber- 
rations. I cannot see the romance of the mer- 
chant or the glamour of the duke's daughter. 
They do not permit themselves to be seized and 
driven by passion and imagination. Instead they 
are driven by fear, which they have misnamed 
Common-sense. These people thwart themselves, 
while my people are thwarted by malign circum- 
stance. 

"Often I have taken other men to the dire dis- 
tricts about which I write, and they have re- 
mained unmoved ; they have seen, in their phrase, 
nothing to get excited about. Well, one cannot 
help that kind of person. One cannot give under- 
standing to the man who regards the flogging of 
children as a joke, or to whom a broken love-story 
is, in low life, a theme for smoking-room anec- 
dotes. 

"Wherever there are human creatures there are 
beauty and courage and sacrifice. The stories in 
Whispering Windows deal with human creatures, 
thieves, drunkards, prostitutes, each of whom is 
striving for happiness in his or her way, and miss- 
ing it, as most of us do. Each has hidden away 
some fine streak of character, some mark below 
which he will not go. And — they are alive. 
They have met life in its ugliest phases, and 
fought it. 

[188] 



PLACES TO GO 

"My answer, then, to the charge of writing 
'loathsome' stories, is that these things happen. 
To those who say that cruelty and degradation 
are not fit subjects for fiction, I say that all twists 
and phases of the human heart are fit subjects for 
fiction. 

"The entertainment of hundreds of thousands 
with 'healthy' literature is a great and worthy 
office ; but the author can only give out what is in 
him. If I write of wretched and strange things, it 
is because these move me most. Happiness needs 
no understanding; but these darker things — they 
are kept too much from sensitive eyes and polite 
ears; and so are too harshly judged upon the 
world's report. I am no reformer; I have never 
'studied' people; and I have no 'purpose,' unless 
it be illumination. 

"What we all need today is illumination; for 
only through full knowledge can we come to truth 
— and understanding." 



11 

Burke's new book, The London Spy, is described 
by the author as "a book of town travels." Some 
of the subjects are London street characters, cab 
shelters, coffee stalls and street entertainers. The 
range is very wide, for there is a chapter called 
"In the Streets of Rich Men," which deals with 
Pall Mall and Piccadilly, as well as a study of 
a waterside colony, including the results of a 

[1891 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

first pipe of opium ("In the Streets of Cyprus"). 
Mr. Burke tells a good deal about the film world 
of Soho and is able to give an intimate sketch of 
Chaplin. Perhaps the most charming of the titles 
in the book is the chapter called "In the Street of 
Beautiful Children." This is a study of a street 
in Stepney, with observations on orphanages and 
reformatories and "their oppressions of the chil- 
dren of the poor." 

Thomas Burke was born in London and seldom 
lives away from it. He started writing when 
employed in a mercantile office, and sold his first 
story when sixteen. He sincerely hopes nobody 
will ever discover and reprint that story. His 
early struggles have been recounted in his Nights 
in London. He married Winifred Wells, a 
young London poet, author of The Three Crowns, 
He lives at Highgate, on the Northern Heights of 
London. He hates literary society and social 
functions generally. His chief recreation is wan- 
dering about London. 



in 

There is very little use in doing a book about 
China now-a-days unless you can do an unusual 
book about China; and that, precisely, is what 
E. G. Kemp has done. Chinese Mettle is an un- 
usual book, even to the shape of it (it is nearly 
square though not taller than the ordinary book) . 
The author has written enough books on China 
[19.0] 



PLACES TO GO 

to cover all the usual ground and, as Sao-Ke Al- 
fred Sze of the Chinese Legation at Washington 
says in his foreword, Miss Kemp "has wisely 
neglected the 'show-window' by putting seaports 
at the end. By acquainting the public with the 
wealth and beauty of the interior, she reveals to 
readers the vitality and potential energy, both 
natural and cultural, of a great nation." Three 
provinces are particularly described — Yunnan, 
Kweichow, Hunan — and there are good chapters 
on the new Chinese woman and the youth of 
China. This book has, in addition to unusual il- 
lustrations, what every good book of its sort 
should have, an index. 

In view of the title of this chapter I have hesi- 
tated over mentioning here Albert C. White's 
The Irish Free State. Whether Ireland now 
should be numbered among the places to go or not 
is possibly a matter of heredity and sympathies; 
but at any rate, Ireland is unquestionably a place 
to read about. Shall we agree that the Irish Free 
State is one of the best places in the world to go 
in a book? Then Mr. White's book will furnish 
up-to-the-minute transportation thither. 

The book is written throughout from the stand- 
point of a vigorous and independent mind. It 
will annoy extreme partisans of all shades of 
opinion, and will provoke much discussion. This 
is especially true of the concluding chapter, in 
which the author discusses "Some Factors in the 
Future." The value of the book is enhanced by 

[191] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

the inclusion of the essential documents of the 
Home Rule struggle, including the four Home 
Rule Bills of 1886, 1893, 1914 and 1920, and 
the terms of the Treaty concluded with Sinn Fein. 

Whether Russia is a place to go is another of 
those debatable questions and I feel that the same 
conclusion holds good. A book is the wisest pass- 
port to Russia at present. Marooned in Moscow^ 
by Marguerite E. Harrison, is not a new book — 
in the sense of having been published last week. 
It remains about the best single book published on 
Russia under the Soviet government; and I say 
this with the full recollection that H. G. Wells 
also wrote a book about Soviet Russia after a visit 
of fifteen days. Mrs. Harrison spent eighteen 
months and was part of the time in prison. She is 
an exceptionally good reporter without prejudices 
for or against any theory of government — with an 
eye only for the facts and a word only for an 
observed fact. 

It is good news that The Secret of the Sahara: 
Kufara^ by Rosita Forbes, is to be published in a 
new edition. This Englishwoman, with no assist- 
ance but that of native guides, penetrated to 
Kufara, which lies hidden in the heart of the 
Libyan desert, a section of the Sahara. This is 
the region of a fanatical sect of Mohammedans 
known as the Senussi. No other white woman 
has ever been known to enter the sacred city of 
Paj, a gloomy citadel hewn out of rock on the 
edge of a beautiful valley. The Secret of the 
[192] 



PLACES TO GO 

Sahara is illustrated with pictures taken by the 
author, many times under pain of death if she 
were detected using a camera. 



IV 

C. E. Andrews is a college professor who saw 
war service in France and relief administration 
work in the Balkans. His gifts as a delightful 
writer will be apparent now that his book of trav- 
els, Old Morocco and the Forbidden Atlas, is out. 
This book, unlike the conventional travel book, 
has the qualities of a good story. There is colour 
and adventure. There are humorous episodes and 
there are pictures that seem to be mirrored in the 
clear lake of a lovely prose. The journey de- 
scribed is through a region of Morocco little 
traversed by white men and over paths of the Atlas 
Mountains frequented chiefly by wild tribes and 
banditti. 

Of all places to go, old New York remains, for 
many, the most appealing. Does it sound queer 
to recommend for those readers A Century of 
Banking in New York: 1822-1922, by Henry 
Wysham Lanier*? Mr. Lanier is a son of Sidney 
Lanier, the poet, and those who believe that a 
chronicle of banking must necessarily be full of 
dry statistics are invited to read the opening chap- 
ter of this book; for Mr. Lanier begins his tale 
with the yellow fever epidemic of 1822, when all 
the banks of New York, to say nothing of the 

[193] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

thousands of people, fled "from the city to the 
country" — that is, from lowermost Broadway to 
the healthful village of Greenwich. This quality 
of human rather than statistical interest is para- 
mount throughout the book. 

I go back almost four years to call attention 
again to Frederic A. Fenger's Alone in the Carib- 
bean^ a book with maps and illustrations from 
unusual photographs, the narrative of a cruise in 
a sailing canoe among the Caribbean Islands. 
... It is just a good book. 



v 

Robin Hood's Barn, by Margaret Emerson 
Bailey, should be classified, I suppose, as a volume 
of essays. It seems to me admirably suited for 
this chapter, since it is all about a pleasant house 
inhabited by pleasant people — and surely that is 
a place where everyone wants to go. Margaret 
Emerson Bailey is describing, I think, an actual 
house and actual people; not so much their lives 
as what they make out of life in the collectivism 
that family life enforces. At least, I seem to get 
from her book a unity of meaning, the lack of 
which in our lives, as we live them daily, makes 
for helplessness and sometimes for despair. 

With even more doubt as to the exact "classifi- 
cation," I proceed to speak here and now of L. P. 
Jacks' s book, The Legends of Smokeover. Mr. 
Jacks is well known as the editor of the Hibbert 

[194] 



PLACES TO GO 

Journal and a writer of distinction upon philo- 
sophical subjects. I should say his specialty is an 
ability to relate philosophical abstractions to prac- 
tical, everyday existence. Those familiar with 
his essays in the Atlantic Monthly will know what 
I mean. And is the Smokeover of his new book, 
then, a place to go? It is, if you wish to see our 
modern age and industrial civilisation expressed 
in such terms — almost in the terms of fiction — 
as make its appraisal relatively easy. 

I suppose this book might make Mr. Jacks mem- 
orable as a satirist. It brings philosophy down 
from the air, like a peaceful thunderbolt, to shat- 
ter the vain illusions we entertain of our material 
success and our civilised strides forward. The 
fact that when you have begun to read the book 
you may experience some difficulty in knowing 
how to take it is in the book's favour. And why 
should you complain so long as from the outset 
you are continuously entertained and amused? 
You can scarcely complain . . . even though at 
the end, you find you have been instructed. In a 
world thickly spotted with Smokeovers, Mr. 
Jacks' s book is a book worth having, worth read- 
ing, worth reading again. 



[195] 



Chapter XIII 
ALIAS RICHARD DEHAN 

i 

AT that, I think I am wrong. I think the title 
of this chapter ought to be "Alias Clotilde 
Graves." 

The problems of literary personality are 
strange. Some time after the Boer War a woman 
who had been in newspaper work in London and 
who had even, at one time, been on the stage under 
the necessity of earning her living, wrote a novel. 
The novel happened to be an intensive study of 
the Boer War, made possible by the fact that the 
writer was the daughter of a soldier and had spent 
her early years in barracks. England at that time 
was interested by the subject of this novel. It 
sold largely and its author was established by the 
book. 

She was forty-six years old in the year when the 
book was published. But this was not the striking 
thing. William De Morgan produced the first of 
his impressive novels at a much more advanced 
age. The significant thing was that in publishing 
her novel, The Dop Doctor (American title: One 

[i 9 6] 



ALIAS RICHARD DEHAN 

Braver Thing), Clotilde Graves chose the pen 
name of Richard Dehan, although she was already 
known as a writer (chiefly for the theatre) under 
her own name. 

I do not know that Miss Graves has ever said 
anything publicly about her motive in electing the 
name of Richard Dehan. But I feel that what- 
ever the cause the result was the distinct emerg- 
ence of a totally different personality. There is 
no final disassociation between Clotilde Graves 
and Richard Dehan. Richard Dehan, novelist, 
steadily employs the material furnished in valu- 
able abundance by Clotilde Graves's life. At the 
same time the personality of Richard Dehan is so 
unusual, so gifted, so lavish in its invention and 
so much at home in surprising backgrounds, that 
something approaching a psychic explanation of 
authorship seems called for. 

ii 

Clotilde Inez Mary Graves was born at Bar- 
racks, Buttevant, County Cork, Ireland, on June 
3, 1864, third daughter of the late Major W. H. 
Graves of the Eighteenth Royal Irish Regiment 
and Antoinette, daughter of Captain George An- 
thony Deane of Harwich. Thus, the English 
Who's Who. 

"She numbers among her ancestors admirals 
and deans," said The Bookman in 1912. 

As the same magazine at about the same time 
spoke of her as descended from Charles II.'s naval 

[197] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

architect, Admiral Sir Anthony Deane, one won- 
ders if Sir Anthony were not the sum of the ad- 
mirals and the total of the deans. But no; at 
any rate in so far as the admirals are concerned, 
for Miss Graves is also said to be distantly re- 
lated to Admiral Nelson. 

I will give you what The Bookman said in the 
"Chronicle and Comment" columns of its number 
for February, 1913: 

"Richard Dehan was nine years old when her 
family emigrated to England from their Irish 
home. She had seen a good deal of barrack life, 
and at Southsea, where they went to live, she 
acquired a large knowledge of both services in the 
circle of naval and military friends they made 
there, and this knowledge years afterward she 
turned to account in Between Two Thieves. In 
1884, Miss Graves became an art student and 
worked at the British Museum galleries and the 
Royal Female School of Art, helping to support 
herself by journalism of a lesser kind, among 
other things drawing little pen-and-ink grotesques 
for the comic papers. By and by she resolved to 
take to dramatic writing and being too poor, she 
says, to manage in any other way, she abandoned 
art and took an engagement in a travelling theatri- 
cal company. In 1888 her first chance as a 
dramatist came. She was again in London, work- 
ing vigorously at journalism, when some one was 
needed to write extra lyrics for a pantomime then 
in preparation. A letter of recommendation from 

[198] 



ALIAS RICHARD DEHAN 

an editor to the manager ended in Miss Clo Graves 
writing the pantomime of Puss in Boots. Later a 
tragedy by her, Nitocris, was produced for an 
afternoon at Drury Lane, and another of her 
plays, The Mother of Three, proved not only a 
literary, but also a material, success." 

Her first novel to be signed Richard Dehan 
being so successful, an English publisher planned 
to bring out an earlier, minor work, already pub- 
lished as by Clotilde Graves, with "Richard 
Dehan" on the title-page. The author was stirred 
to a vigorous and public protest. In the ensuing 
controversy someone made the point that the pro- 
posed reissue would not be more indefensible than 
the act of a publishing house in bringing out 
posthumous "books" by O. Henry and dragging 
from its deserved oblivion Rudyard Kipling's 
Abaft the Funnel. 

I do not know whether the publishing of books 
is a business or a profession. I should say that 
it has, at one time or another and by one or an- 
other individual or concern, been pursued as 
either or both. 

There have certainly been, and probably are, 
book publishers who not only conduct their 
business as a business but as a business of a low 
order. There have been and are book publishers 
who, though quite necessarily business men, ob- 
serve an ethical code as nice as that of any of the 
recognised professions. Perhaps publishing books 
should qualify as an art, since it has the character- 

[199] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

istics of bringing out what is best or worst in a 
publisher ; and, indeed, if we are to hold that any 
successful means of self-expression is art, then 
publishing books has been an art more than once ; 
for unquestionably there are publishers who find 
self-expression in their work. 

This is an interesting subject, but I must not 
pursue it in this place. Certainly Miss Graves 
was justified in objecting to the use of her new 
pen name on work already published under her 
own name. In her case, as I think, the objection 
was peculiarly well-founded, because it seems to 
me that Richard Dehan was a new person. Since 
Richard Dehan appeared on the title-page of The 
Dop Doctor, there has never been a Clotilde 
Graves in books. You have only to study the 
books. The Dop Doctor was followed, two years 
later, by Between Two Thieves. This novel has 
as a leading character Florence Nightingale under 
the name of Ada Merling. The story was at 
first to have been called "The Lady With The 
Lamp"; but the author delayed it for a year and 
subjected it to a complete rewriting, the result 
of a new and enlarged conception of the story. 

Then came a steady succession of novels by 
Richard Dehan. I remember with what surprise 
I read, in 1918, That Which Hath Wings, a war 
story of large dimensions and an incredible 
amount of exact and easy detail. I remember, 
too, noting that there was embedded in it a mar- 
vellous story for children — an airplane flight in 
[200] 



ALIAS RICHARD DEHAN 

which a youngster figured — if the publisher chose, 
with the author's consent, to lift this out of its 
larger, adult setting. I remember very vividly 
reading in 1920 a collection of short stories by 
Richard Dehan, published under the title The 
Eve of Pascua. Pascua is the Spanish word for 
Easter. I wondered where on earth, unless in 
Spain itself, the author got the bright colouring 
for his story. 

What I did not realise at the time was that 
Richard Dehan is like that. Now, smitten to 
earth by the 500-page novel which he has just 
completed, I think I understand better. The 
Just Steward, from one standpoint, makes the 
labours of Gustave Flaubert in Salaambo seem 
trivial. It is known with what passionate tenac- 
ity and surprising ardour the French master 
studied the subject of ancient Carthage, grubbing 
like the lowliest archaeologist to get at his finger- 
tips all those recondite allusions so necessary if he 
were to move with lightness, assurance and con- 
summate art through the scenes of his novel. But, 
frankly, one does not expect this of the third 
daughter of an Irish soldier, an ex-journalist and 
the author of a Drury Lane pantomime. Never- 
theless the erudition is all here. From this stand- 
point, The Just Steward is truly monumental. I 
will show you a sample or two: 

"Beautiful, even with the trench and wall of 
Diocletian's comparatively recent siege scarring 
the orchards and vineyards of Lake Mareotis, 

[201] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

splendid even though her broken canals and aque- 
ducts had never been repaired, and part of her 
western quarter still displayed heaps of calcined 
ruins where had been temples, palaces and acad- 
emies, Alexandria lay shimmering under the 
African sun. . . . 

"The vintage of Egypt was in full swing, the 
figs and dates were being harvested. Swarms of 
wasps and hornets, armed with formidable stings,' 
yellow-striped like the dreaded nomads of the 
south and eastern frontiers, greedily sucked the 
sugary juices of the ripe fruit. Flocks of fig- 
birds twittered amongst the branches, being like 
the date-pigeons, almost too gorged to fly. Half 
naked, dark or tawny skinned, tattooed native 
labourers, hybrids of mingled races, with heads 
close-shaven save for a topknot, dwellers in mud- 
hovels, drudges of the water-wheel, cut down the 
heavy grape-clusters with sickle-shaped cooper 
knives. 

"Ebony, woolly-haired negroes in clean white 
breech-cloths, piled up the gathered fruit in tall 
baskets woven of reeds and lined with leaves. 
Copts with the rich reddish skins, the long eyes 
and boldly curving profiles of Egyptian warriors 
and monarchs as presented on the walls of ancient 
temples of Libya and the Thebaid, moved about 
in leather-girdled blue linen tunics and hide san- 
dals, keeping account of the laden panniers, roped 
upon the backs of diminutive asses and carried 
to the winepresses as fast as they were filled. 
[202] 



ALIAS RICHARD DEHAN 

"The negroes sang as they set snares for fig- 
birds, and stuffed themselves to the throat with 
grapes and custard-apples. The fat beccaficoes 
beloved of the epicurean fell by hundreds into the 
limed horsehair traps. Greek, Egyptian and ne- 
gro girls, laughing under garlands of hibiscus, 
periwinkle and tuberoses, coaxed the fat morsels 
out of the black men to carry home for a supper 
treat, while acrobats, comic singers, sellers of 
cakes, drinks and sweetmeats, with strolling jug- 
glers and jesters and Jewish fortune-tellers of 
both sexes, assailed the workers and the merry- 
makers with importunities and made harvest in 
their own way." 

The story is extraordinary. Opening in the 
Alexandria of the fourth century, it pictures two 
men, a Roman official and a Jewish steward, who 
are friends unto death. The second of the four 
parts or books into which the novel is divided 
opens in England in 1914. We have to do with 
John Hazel, the descendant of Hazael Aben 
Hazael, and with the lovely Katharine Forbis, 
whose ancestor was a Roman, Hazael Aben 
HazaeTs sworn friend. 

A story of exciting action certainly; it has ele- 
ments that would ordinarily be called melodra- 
matic — events which are focussed down into real- 
ities against the tremendous background of an 
incredible war. The exotic settings are Egypt 
and Palestine. It must not be thought that the 
story is bizarre; the scenes in England, the Eng- 

[203] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

lish slang of John Hazel, as well as the typical 
figure of Trixie, Lady Wastwood, are utterly 
modern. I do not find anything to explain how 
Miss Graves could write such a book; the answer 
is that Richard Dehan wrote it. 



in 



Miss Graves, of whose antecedents and educa- 
tion we already know something, is a Roman 
Catholic in faith and a Liberal Unionist in poli- 
tics. She lives at The Towers, Beeding, near 
Bramber, Sussex. Her recreations are gardening 
and driving. 

But Richard Dehan knows the early history of 
the Christian Church; he knows military life, 
strategy, tactics, types; he knows in a most ex- 
traordinary way the details of Jewish history and 
religious observances; he knows perfectly and as 
a matter of course all about English middle class 
life ; he knows all sorts of things about the East — 
Turkey and Arabia and those countries. 

This is a discrepancy which will bear a good 
deal of accounting for. 

Before I try to account for it I will give you a 
long passage from The Just Steward^ describing 
the visit of Katharine Forbis and her friend to the 
house of John Hazel, lately of London and now 
of Alexandria: 

"The negro porter who had opened the door, a 
[204] 



ALIAS RICHARD DEHAN 

huge Ethiopian of ebony blackness, dressed and 
turbaned in snow-white linen, salaamed deeply to 
the ladies, displaying as he did so a mouthful of 
teeth as dazzling in whiteness and sharply- 
pointed as those of the mosaic dog. 

"Then the negro shut the heavy door and 
locked and bolted it. They heard the car snort 
and move away as the heavy bolts scrooped in 
their ancient grooves of stone. But, as they 
glanced back, towards the entrance, the imper- 
turbable attendant in the black kaftan waved 
them forward to where another man, exactly like 
himself in feature, colouring and costume, waited 
as imperturbably on the threshold of a larger hall 
beyond. On its right-hand doorpost was affixed 
a cylinder of metal repoussee with an oval piece 
of glass on that something like a human eye. And 
the big invisible bees went on humming as indus- 
triously and as sleepily as ever: 

uc Bz'zz'z!...Bzz'z!...Bzzm'm'm! . . .' 
"Perhaps it was the bees' thick, sleepy droning 
that made Miss Forbis feel as though she had 
previously visited this house in a dream, in which, 
though the mosaic dog had certainly figured, to- 
gether with a negro who had opened doors, the 
rows of shoes along the wall, the little creature 
tripping at her side, the two dark, ultra-respect- 
able men in black tarbushes and kaftans had had 
no place or part. Only John Hazel had bulked 
big. He was there, beyond the grave Semitic face 
of the second Jewish secretary, on the farther side 

[205] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

of the torrent of boiling amber sunshine pouring 
through a central opening in the roof of the inner 
hall that succeeded the vestibule of the mosaic 
Cerberus. An atrium some forty feet in length, 
paved with squares of black and yellow marble 
with an oblong pool in the midst of it, upon whose 
still crystal surface pink and crimson petals of 
roses had been strewn in patterns, and in the 
centre of which a triple-jetted fountain played. 

"The humming of the unseen bees came louder 
than ever, from a doorway in the wall upon 
Katharine's right hand, a wall of black polished 
marble, decorated with an inlaid ornament in por- 
phyry of yellow and red and pale green. The 
curtain of dyed and threaded reeds did not hide 
what lay beyond the doorway. You saw a long, 
high-pitched whitewashed room, cooled by big 
wooden electric fans working under the ceiling, 
and traversed by avenues of creamy-white Chi- 
nese matting, running between rows of low native 
desks, before each of which squatted, on naked 
or cotton-sock-covered heels, or sat cross-legged 
upon a square native chintz cushion, a coffee- 
coloured, almond-eyed young Copt, in a black 
or blue cotton nightgown, topped with the tar- 
bush of black felt or a dingy-white or olive-brown 
muslin turban, murmuring softly to himself as he 
made entries, from right to left, in a huge limp- 
covered ledger, or deftly fingered the balls of 
coloured clay strung on the wires of the abacus 
at his side. 
[206] 



ALIAS RICHARD DEHAN 

'"Oh! . . . Wonderful! I'm so Glad you 
Brought me !' 

"Lady Wastwood's emphatic exclamation of 
pleasure in her surroundings brought cessation in 
the humming — caused a swivelling of capped or 
turbanned heads all down the length of three 
avenues — evoked a simultaneous flash of black 
Oriental eyes, and white teeth in dusky faces 
lifted or turned. Then at the upper end of the 
long counting-house, where three wide glassless 
windows looked on a sanded palm-garden, and 
the leather-topped knee-hole tables, roll-top desks, 
copying ink presses, mahogany revolving-chairs, 
telephone installations, willow-paper baskets, 
pewter inkstands and Post Office Directories sug- 
gested Cornhill and Cheapside rather than the 
Orient — one of the olive-faced Jewish head-clerks 
in kaftans and side-curls coughed — and as though 
he had pulled a string controlling all the observ- 
ant faces, every tooth was hidden and every eye 
discreetly bent on the big limp ledgers again. 

"All the Coptic bees were humming sonorously 
in unison as Katharine went forward to a lofty 
doorway, framing brightness, where waited to re- 
ceive her the master of the hive. . . . 

"The light beings behind him may have exag- 
gerated his proportions, but he seemed to Trixie 
the biggest man she had ever seen, and nearly the 
ugliest. Close-curling coarse black hair capped 
his high-domed skull, and his stern, powerful, 
swarthy face, big-nosed and long-chinned, with a 

[207] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

humorous quirk at the corners of the heavy-lipped 
mouth, that redeemed its sensuousness, was 
lighted by eyes of the intensest black, burning 
under heavy beetle-brows. His khaki uniform, 
though of fine material and admirable cut, was 
that of a common ranker, and a narrow strip of 
colours over the heart, and the fact of his left 
arm being bandaged and slung, intimated to Lady 
Wastwood that Katharine's Jewish friend had 
already served with some degree of distinction, 
and had been wounded in the War. And drawing 
back with her characteristic inconquerable shy- 
ness, as he advanced to Miss Forbis, plainly un- 
conscious of any presence save hers, Trixie's ob- 
servant green eyes saw him bend his towering 
head, and sweep his right arm out and down with 
slow Oriental stateliness, bringing back the sup- 
ple hand to touch breast, lips and brow. Whether 
or not he had raised the hem of Katharine's skirt 
to his lips and kissed it, Lady Wastwood could 
not definitely determine. She was left with the 
impression that he had done this thing." 

iv 

I should have liked to have given, rather than 
purely descriptive passages, a slice of the com- 
plicated and tense action with which the story 
brims over, but there is the difficulty that such a 
scene might not be intelligible to one not having 
read the story from the beginning. I must resist 
[208] 



ALIAS RICHARD DEHAN 

the tendency to quote any more, having indulged 
it already to excess, and I am ready to propound 
my theory of the existence of Richard Dehan. 

If you receive a letter from The Towers, Beed- 
ing, it will bear a double signature, like this : 

RICHARD DEHAN 
CLOTILDE GRAVES 

Clotilde Graves has become a secondary per- 
sonality. 

There was once a time when there was no 
Richard Dehan. There now are times when there 
is no Clotilde Graves. 

To a woman in middle age an opportunity pre- 
sented itself. It was the chance to write a novel 
around the subject which, as a girl, she had come 
to know a great deal about — the subject of war. 
To write about it and gain attention, the novel 
required a man's signature. 

Then there was born in the mind of the woman 
who purposed to write the novel the idea of a 
man — of the man — who should be the novelist 
she wanted to be. He should use as by right and 
from instinct the material which lay inutile at her 
woman's disposal. 

She created Richard Dehan. Perhaps, in so 
doing, she created another monster like Franken- 
stein's. I do not know. 

Born of necessity and opportunity and a 
woman's inventiveness, Richard Dehan took over 
whatever of Clotilde Graves's he could use. He 

[209] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

is now the master. It is, intellectually and spiritu- 
ally, as if he were the full-grown son of Clotilde 
Graves. It is a partnership not less intimate than 
that. 

Clotilde Graves — but she does not matter. I 
think she existed to bring Richard Dehan into 
the world. 

Books 
by Richard Dehan 
Novels: 

THE LOVER'S BATTLE 

THE DOP DOCTOR 

BETWEEN TWO THIEVES 

THE HEADQUARTER RECRUIT 

THE COST OF WINGS 

THE MAN OF IRON 

OFF SANDY HOOK 

EARTH TO EARTH 

UNDER THE HERMES 

THAT WHICH HATH WINGS 

A SAILOR'S HOME 

THE EVE OF PASCUA 

THE VILLA OF THE PEACOCK 

THE JUST STEWARD 

Plays: 

NITOCRIS 

DRURY LANE PANTOMIME, PUSS IN BOOTS 
DR. AND MRS. NEILL 
A MOTHER OF THREE 
[210] 



ALIAS RICHARD DEHAN 



A MATCHMAKER 
THE BISHOP'S EYE 
THE FOREST LOVERS 
A MAKER OF COMEDIES 
THE BOND OF NINON 
A TENEMENT TRAGEDY 



Sources 
on Richard Dehan 

Who's Who [in England]. 

the bookman for February, 1913 (Volume 
XXXVI, pp. 595-6), also brief mention in 
the bookman for September and October, 
1912. 

Private Information. 



[211] 



Chapter XIV 
WITH FULL DIRECTIONS 



I HAVE read the book called Civilization in 
the United States, a collection of essays by 
various Americans, and count the time well spent 
chiefly because, at the end of the chapter on 
"Sport," I came upon these words by Ring W. 
Lardner : 

"The best sporting fiction we know of, prac- 
tically the only sporting fiction an adult may read 
without fear of stomach trouble, is contained in 
the collected works of the late Charles E. Van 
Loan." 

This is expert testimony, if there is such a 
thing. The books Mr. Lardner referred to are 
published in a five-volume memorial edition con- 
sisting of : 

fore! golf stories 

SCORE by innings: baseball stories 

OLD MAN CURRY! RACETRACK STORIES 
TAKING THE COUNT: PRIZE RING STORIES 
BUCK PARVIN : STORIES OF THE MOTION PIC- 
TURE GAME 
[212] 



WITH FULL DIRECTIONS 

This collected edition was published by George 
H. Doran Company with the arrangement that 
every cent above actual cost should go to Mrs. 
Van Loan and her children. 

William T. Tilden, 2nd, was winner of the 
world's tennis championship in 1920 and 1921. 
With W. M. Johnston he was winner of the Davis 
cup in the same years. He also won the United 
States championship in those years. His book, 
The Art of Lawn Tennis, published in 1921, was 
republished in 1922. The revised edition includ- 
ed chapters on the winning of the Davis cup and 
on the world's and the United States champion- 
ships, on Mrs. Mallory's play in the women's 
world championship games in France and Eng- 
land, and on Mile. Lenglen's play in America. 
Mr. Tilden also added an estimate of the prom- 
ising youngsters playing tennis and indulged in 
one or two surprising and radical prophecies. 

Twenty Years of Lawn Tennis, by A. Wallis 
Myers, an English player of distinction, has inter- 
esting chapters on play in other countries than 
America, England and France. An anecdotal 
volume this, with moments on the Riviera and 
matches played in South Africa. 

After unpreventable delays we have, at last, 
The Gist of Golf by Harry Vardon. Using re- 
markable photographs, Vardon devotes a chapter 
to each club and chapters to stance, grip, and 
swing. Although the chief value of the book is 
to the player who wants to improve his game, 

[213] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

there is text interesting to everyone familiar 
with golf; for Vardon gives personal reminis- 
cences covering years of play and illustrative of 
his instructions. 



11 

I suppose the fifty-three photographs, mostly 
full page ones, are the outstanding feature of 
Wild Life in the Tree Tops, by Captain C. W. R. 
Knight. This English book, large and flat, shows 
with the aid of the camera, the merlin pursuing 
her quarry, young tawny owls in a disused mag- 
pie's nest, female noctules and their young, the 
male kestrel brooding, and a male buzzard that 
has just brought a rabbit to the younglings in the 
nest. Plenty of other pictures like these! The 
chapters deal with the buzzards of the Doone 
country, the lady's hawk, woodpeckers, brown 
owls, sparrow-hawks, herons and various other 
feathered people. 

Did you ever read Lad: A Dog? Well, any- 
way, there is a man named Albert Payson Terhune 
and he and his wife live at a place called "Sunny- 
bank," at Pompton Lakes, New Jersey, where 
they raise prize winning collie dogs. Photographs 
come from New Jersey showing Mr. and Mrs. 
Terhune taking afternoon tea, entirely sur- 
rounded by magnificently coated collies. You 
will also find, if you stray into a bookstore this 
autumn, a book with a jacket drawn by Charles 
[214] 



WITH FULL DIRECTIONS 

Livingston Bull — a jacket from which looms a 
colossal collie. He carries in a firmly knotted 
shawl or blanket or sheet or something (the knot 
clenched between his teeth) a new-born babe. 
New-born or approximately so. The title of this 
book is Further Adventures of Lad. 

Mr. Terhune writes the best dog stories. Read 
a little bit from the first chapter of Further 
Adventures of Lad: 

"Even the crate which brought the new dog to 
the Place failed somehow to destroy the illusion 
of size and fierceness. But the moment the crate 
door was opened the delusion was wrecked by Lad 
himself. 

"Out on to the porch he walked. The ram- 
shackle crate behind him had a ridiculous air of 
chrysalis from which some bright thing had de- 
parted. For a shaft of sunlight was shimmering 
athwart the veranda floor. And into the middle 
of the warm bar of radiance Laddie stepped — 
and stood. 

"His fluffy puppy-coat of wavy mahogany-and- 
white caught a million sunbeams, reflecting them 
back in tawny-orange glints and in a dazzle as of 
snow. His forepaws were absurdly small even 
for a puppy's. Above them the ridging of the 
stocky leg bones gave as clear promise of mighty 
size and strength as did the amazingly deep little 
chest and square shoulders. 

"Here one day would stand a giant among 
dogs, powerful as a timber-wolf, lithe as a cat, as 

[215] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

dangerous to foes as an angry tiger ; a dog without 
fear or treachery; a dog of uncanny brain and 
great lovingly loyal heart and, withal, a dancing 
sense of fun. A dog with a soul. 

"All this, any canine physiologist might have 
read from the compact frame, the proud head car- 
riage, the smoulder in the deep-set sorrowful dark 
eyes. To the casual observer, he was but a beau- 
tiful and appealing and wonderfully cuddleable 
bunch of puppyhood. 

"Lad's dark eyes swept the porch, the soft 
swelling green of the lawn. The flash of fire-blue 
lake among the trees below. Then he deigned to 
look at the group of humans at one side of him. 
Gravely, impersonally, he surveyed them; not at 
all cowed or strange in his new surroundings; 
courteously inquisitive as to the twist of luck that 
had set him down here and as to the people who, 
presumably, were to be his future companions. 

"Perhaps the stout little heart quivered just a 
bit, if memory went back to his home kennel and 
to the rowdy throng of brothers and sisters and, 
most of all, to the soft furry mother against 
whose side he had nestled every night since he 
was born. But if so, Lad was too valiant to show 
homesickness by so much as a whimper. And, 
assuredly, this House of Peace was infinitely bet- 
ter than the miserable crate wherein he had spent 
twenty horrible and jouncing and smelly and 
noisy hours. 

"From one to another of the group strayed the 

[216] 



WITH FULL DIRECTIONS 

level sorrowful gaze. After the swift inspection 
Laddie's eyes rest again on the Mistress. For 
an instant, he stood, looking at her, in that mildly 
polite curiosity which held no hint of personal 
interest. 

"Then, all at once, his plumy tail began to 
wave. Into his sad eyes sprang a flicker of warm 
friendliness. Unbidden — oblivious of everyone 
else — he trotted across to where the Mistress sat. 
He put one tiny white paw in her lap and stood 
thus, looking up lovingly into her face, tail awave, 
eyes shining. 

" 'There's no question whose dog he's going to 
be,' laughed the Master. 'He's elected you — by 
acclamation.' " 



in 

Not content with being the husband of Mar- 
garet Sangster, C. M. Sheridan has written The 
Stag Cook Book. I would have it understood 
that this is an honest-to-goodness cook-book, al- 
though I readily confess that there is plenty of 
humour throughout its pages. Mr. Sheridan has 
acquired various unusual and unreplaceable 
recipes — I believe he secured from Wladislaw 
Benda, the illustrator, a rare and secret formula 
for the preparation of a species of Hungarian or 
Polish pastry. Now, as every housewife knows, 
and as no man except a Frenchman or somebody 
like that knows, the preparation of pastry is an 

[217] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

intricate art. Simply to make ordinary French 
pastry requires innumerable rollings to incredible 
thinnesses; besides which the pastry has to be 
chilled ; but there is more than that to this recon- 
dite substance which Mr. Benda, probably under 
the terms of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, surren- 
dered to Mr. Sheridan. The pastry in question has 
to be executed with the aid of geometrical de- 
signs. Mr. Sheridan has supplied the necessary 
front elevation and working plans. He shows you 
where you fold along the line from A to B — in 
other words, along the dotted line. Thus no man 
using this unique cook-book can go wrong any 
more than his wife can go wrong when making a 
new dress according to Pictorial Review or 
McCall's or Delineator patterns. 

On the other hand, women remain still chiefly 
responsible for the food we eat. Elizabeth A. 
Monaghan's What to Eat and How to Prepare It 
is an orthodox cook-book in contrast with Mr. 
Sheridan's daring adventure. 



IV 

Large numbers of people still play games. I do 
not mean cards or tennis or golf or any of the 
famous outdoor and indoor sports, but just games, 
the sort of things that are sometimes called stunts 
and that make the life of the party — or, by their 
absence or failure, rob the evening gathering of 
all its vitality. For the people who play games, 

[218] 



WITH FULL DIRECTIONS 

Edna Geister is the one best bet. Edna Geister 
knows all about stunts and games and parties and 
she brims over with clever ideas for the hostess 
or recreation leader. You will find them in her 
book Ice-breakers and the Ice-breaker Herself. 
The second section of this book, The Ice-breaker 
Herself, has been bound separately for the con- 
venience of those already owning Ice Breakers. 
Miss Geister's latest book, It Is to Laugh, was 
written primarily for adults because there is so 
much material already available for the recreation 
of children. Nevertheless almost every one of the 
games and stunts described in It Is to Laugh can 
be used for children. There are games for large 
groups and small groups, games for the family, 
for dinner parties, for community affairs and for 
almost any kind of social gathering, with one 
chapter devoted to out-of-door and picnic pro- 
grammes. 

Playing the piano is not a game, at least not as 
Mark Hambourg, the pianist and composer, plays 
it. Hambourg, though born in South Russia in 
1879, the eldest son of the late Professor Michel 
Hambourg, has for years been a naturalised Eng- 
lishman. In fact, he married in 1907 the Hon- 
ourable Dorothea Mackenzie, daughter of Lord 
Muir Mackenzie. And the pair have four daugh- 
ters. Mark Hambourg was a pupil of Leschetit- 
zky in Vienna, where he obtained the Liszt schol- 
arship in 1894. He has made concert appearances 
all over the world, his third American tour falling 

[219] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

in 1907, and his first Canadian tour in 1910. 
Mark Hambourg's book is called How to 
Play the Piano and the text is helped with prac- 
tical illustrations and diagrams and a complete 
compendium of five-finger exercises, scales, ar- 
peggi, thirds and octaves as practised by Ham- 
bourg. 



Those who read The Bookman will not need 
to be told that the articles by Robert Cortes Hol- 
liday on Writing as a Business: A Practical 
Guide for Author vr, will constitute an exceptional 
book. The great point about Mr. Holliday's 
chapters, which have been written in collaboration 
with Alexander Van Rensselaer, is that they are 
disinterested. There has been an immense 
amount of printed matter, some of it in book 
form, telling of the problems that confront the 
writer, especially the young beginner. As a rule, 
the underlying motive was to induce people to 
write so that someone else might make money out 
of their efforts, whether the writers did or not. 
So-called correspondence schools in the art of 
writing, so-called literary bureaus, interested in- 
dividuals anxious to earn "commissions," and 
sometimes individuals who purported to be pub- 
lishers have for many years carried on a continu- 
ous campaign at the expense of persons who did 
not know how to write but who fancied they 
could write and who, above everything, craved to 
[220] 



WITH FULL DIRECTIONS 

write — craved seeing themselves in print and 
hearing themselves referred to as "authors" or 
"writers." It would take a statistician versed in 
all manner of mysteries and calculations to tell 
how many people have been deluded by this stuff, 
and how much money has been nuzzled out of 
them. The time was certainly here for someone in 
a position to tell the truth to speak up. 

And of Mr. Holliday's qualifications there is 
no question. He has had to do with books and 
authors and book publishing for years. He was, 
as his readers know, for a number of years in 
the Scribner bookstore. He was with Double- 
day, Page & Company at Garden City; he was 
with George H. Doran Company, serving not only 
as editor of The Bookman but acting in other edi- 
torial capacities. He is now connected with 
Henry Holt & Company. As an author he is 
amply established. Therefore, when he tells 
about writing and book publishing and book- 
selling, and when he discusses such subjects as 
"Publishing Your Own Book," his statements are 
most thoroughly documented. The important 
thing, however, is that Mr. Holliday is disinter- 
ested, he has no axe to grind in the advice he 
gives; although the impressive thing about his 
book is the absence of advice and the continual 
presentation of unvarnished facts. After all, con- 
fronted with the facts, the literary aspirant of 
ordinary intelligence must and should reach his 
own conclusions as regards what he wants to do 

[221] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

and how best to essay it. This is a sample of the 
kind of straightforwardness to which Mr. Hol- 
liday adheres : 

"An experienced writer 'on his own' may earn 
a couple of hundred dollars or so in one week, and 
for several weeks afterward average something 
like $14.84. The beginner-writer should not con- 
sider that he has 'arrived' when he has sold one 
story, or even several ; it may be a year before he 
places another. And the future of a writer who 
may be having a very fair success now is not any 
too secure. Public taste changes. New orders 
come in. The kind of thing which took so well 
yesterday may be quite out of fashion tomorrow. 

"There is among people generally much mis- 
conception as to the profits ordinarily derived by 
the author from the publication of a book. The 
price of a novel today is about two dollars. Usu- 
ally the author receives a royalty of about fifteen 
cents a copy on the first two thousand copies sold, 
and about twenty cents on each copy thereafter. 
A novel which sold upward of 50,000 copies 
would bring the author something like $10,000. 
Many men make as much as $10,000 by a year's 
work at some other business or profession than 
authorship. But authors who make that amount 
in a year, or anything near that amount, are ex- 
ceedingly rare. A book is regarded by the pub- 
lisher as highly successful if it sells from five to 
ten thousand copies. Far and away the greater 
number of books published do not sell as many 
[222] 



WITH FULL DIRECTIONS 

as 1,500 copies. Many far less. A recently pub- 
lished book, which received a very cordial 'press/ 
has had an uncommon amount of publicity, and 
the advertisements of which announce that it is 
in its 'fourth printing,' has, after about half a 
year, earned for its author perhaps $1,000. Its 
sale now in active measure is over. An author is 
fairly fortunate who receives as much as $500 or 
$600 from the sale of his book. I recall an ex- 
cellent story published something over a year ago 
which was much praised by many reviewers. It 
took the author probably the better part of a year 
to write it. He was then six months or more 
getting it accepted. He has not been able to place 
much of anything since. At the end, then, of 
two years and a half he has received from his 
literary labors about $110." 

Mr. Van Rensselaer has greatly enhanced the 
usefulness of Writing as a Business by the addi- 
tion of very complete bibliographies. 

Illumination and Its Development in the Pres- 
ent Day, by Sidney Farnsworth, has nothing to do 
with street or indoor lighting but has a great deal 
to do with lettering and illuminating manuscripts. 
Mr. Farnsworth traces the growth of illumination 
from its birth, showing, by means of numerous 
diagrams and drawings, its gradual development 
through the centuries from mere writing to the 
elaborate poster work and commercial lettering 
of the present day. Although other books have 
already been written on this fascinating subject, 

[223] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

Mr. Farnsworth breaks new ground in many di- 
rections; he treats the matter from the modern 
standpoint in a manner which makes his work in- 
valuable not only to students of the art, but also 
to the rapidly-growing public interested in what 
has hitherto been a somewhat exclusive craft. 
The book is well illustrated. 



[224} 



Chapter XV 
FRANK SWINNERTON: ANALYST OF LOVERS 



IT is as an analyst of lovers, I think, that Frank 
Swinnerton claims and holds his place among 
those whom we still sometimes call the younger 
novelists of England. 

I do not say this because his fame was achieved 
at a bound with Nocturne, but because all his 
novels show a natural preoccupation with the 
theme of love between the sexes. Usually it is a 
pair of young lovers or contrasted pairs ; but some- 
times this is interestingly varied, as in September, 
where we have a study of love that comes to a 
woman in middle life. 

The unique character of Nocturne makes it 
very hard to write about Swinnerton. It is true 
that Arnold Bennett wrote: "I am prepared to 
say to the judicious reader unacquainted with 
Swinnerton's work, 'Read Nocturne] and to stand 
or fall, and to let him stand or fall by the result." 
At the same time, though the rule is that we must 
judge an artist by his finest work and a genius 
by his greatest masterpiece, it is not entirely just 

[225] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

to estimate the living writer by a single unique 
performance, an extraordinary piece of virtuosity, 
which Nocturne unquestionably is. For anyone 
who wishes to understand and appreciate Swin- 
nerton, I would recommend that he begin with 
Coquette, follow it with September, follow that 
with Shops and Houses and then read Nocturne. 
That is, I would have made this recommendation 
a few months ago, but so representative of all 
sides of Swinnerton' s talent is his new novel, The 
Three Lovers, that I should now prefer to say to 
anyone unacquainted with Swinnerton: "Begin 
with The Three Lovers' 9 And after that I would 
have him read Coquette and the other books in 
the order I have named. After he had reached 
and finished Nocturne, I would have him turn to 
the several earlier novels — The Happy Family, 
On the Staircase, and The Chaste Wife. 



11 

The Three Lovers, a full-length novel which 
Swinnerton finished in Devonshire in the spring of 
1922, is a story of human beings in conflict, and 
it is also a picture of certain phases of modern 
life. A young and intelligent girl, alone in the 
world, is introduced abruptly to a kind of life 
with which she is unfamiliar. Thereafter the 
book shows the development of her character and 
her struggle for the love of the men to whom she 
is most attracted. The book steadily moves 
[226] 




FRANK SWINNERTON 



[227] 



SWINNERTON: ANALYST OF LOVERS 

through its earlier chapters of introduction and 
growth to a climax that is both dramatic and mov- 
ing. It opens with a characteristic descriptive 
passage from which I take a few sentences : 

"It was a suddenly cold evening towards the 
end of September. . . . The street lamps were 
sharp brightnesses in the black night, wickedly 
revealing the naked rain-swept paving-stones. It 
was an evening to make one think with joy of 
succulent crumpets and rampant fires and warm 
slippers and noggins of whisky; but it was not an 
evening for cats or timid people. The cats were 
racing about the houses, drunken with primeval 
savagery; the timid people were shuddering and 
looking in distress over feebly hoisted shoulders, 
dreadfully prepared for disaster of any kind, 
afraid of sounds and shadows and their own 
forgotten sins. . . . The wind shook the win- 
dow-panes; soot fell down all the chimneys; 
trees continuously rustled as if they were try- 
ing to keep warm by constant friction and move- 
ment." 

The imagination which sees in the movement of 
trees an endeavour to keep warm is not less sharp 
in its discernment of human beings. I will give 
one other passage, a conversation between Patricia 
Quin, the heroine, and another girl : 

" 'Do you mean he's in love with you?' asked 
Patricia. That seems to be what's the matter.' 

" 'Oho, it takes two to be in love,' scornfully 
cried Amy. 'And I'm not in love with him.' 

[229] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

" 'But he's your friend/ 

" 'That's just it. He won't recognise that men 
and women can be friends. He's a very decent 
fellow; but he's full of this sulky jealousy, and 
he glowers and sulks whenever any other man 
comes near me. Well, that's not my idea of 
friendship.' 

" 'Nor mine/ echoed Patricia, trying to recon- 
struct her puzzled estimate of their relations. 
'But couldn't you stop that'? Surely, if you put 
it clearly to him . . .' 

"Amy interrupted with a laugh that was almost 
shrill. Her manner was coldly contemptuous. 

" 'You are priceless !' she cried. 'You say the 
most wonderful things.' 

" 'Well, I should.' 

" T wonder.' Amy moved about, collecting the 
plates. 'You see . . . some day I shall marry. 
And in a weak moment I said probably I'd marry 
him.' 

" 'Oh, Amy ! Of course he's jealous !' Swiftly, 
Patricia did the young man justice. 

" T didn't give him any right to be. I told him 
I'd changed my mind. I've told him lots of times 
that probably I sha'n't marry him.' 

" 'But you keep him. Amy ! You do encour- 
age him.' Patricia was stricken afresh with a 
generous impulse of emotion on Jack's behalf. T 
mean, by not telling him straight out. Surely you 
can't keep a man waiting like that*? I wonder he 
doesn't insist? 

[230] 



SWINNERTON: ANALYST OF LOVERS 

" 'Jack insist !' Amy was again scornful. 'Not 
he!' 

"There was a moment's pause. Innocently, 
Patricia ventured upon a charitable interpreta- 
tion. 

" 'He must love you very much. But, Amy, if 
you don't love him.' 

" 'What's love got to do with marriage 4 ?' asked 
Amy, with a sourly cynical air. 

" 'Hasn't it — everything? Patricia was full 
of sincerity. She was too absorbed in this story 
to help Amy to clear the table ; but on finding her- 
self alone in the studio while the crockery was 
carried away to the kitchen she mechanically 
shook the crumbs behind the gas-fire and folded 
the napkin. This was the most astonishing mo- 
ment of her day. 

"Presently Amy returned, and sat in the big 
armchair, while, seated upon the podger and lean- 
ing back against the wall, Patricia smoked a 
cigarette. 

" 'You see, the sort of man one falls in love 
with doesn't make a good husband,' announced 
Amy, as patiently as if Patricia had been in fact a 
child. She persisted in her attitude of superior 
wisdom in the world's ways. 'It's all very 
well ; but a girl ought to be able to live with any 
man she fancies, and then in the end marry 
the safe man for a . . . well, for life, if she 
likes.' 

"Patricia's eyes were opened wide. 

C23O 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

" 'I shouldn't like that,' she said. 'I don't 
think the man would either.' 

" 'Bless you, the men all do it,' cried Amy, con- 
temptuously. 'Don't make any mistake about 
that.' 

" 'I don't believe it,' said Patricia. 'Do you 
mean that my father — or your father . . .?' 

" 'Oh, I don't know. I meant, nowadays. 
Most of the people you saw last night are living 
together or living with other people.' 

"Patricia was aware of a chill. 

" 'But you've never,' she urged. 'I've never.' 

" 'No.' Amy was obviously irritated by the 
personal application. 'That's just it. I say we 
ought to be free to do what we like. Men do 
what they like.' 

" 'D'you think Jack has lived with other girls?' 

" 'My dear child, how do I know? I should 
hope he has.' 

" 'Hope ! Amy, you do make me feel a prig.' 

" 'Perhaps you are one. Oh, I don't know. 
I'm sick of thinking, thinking, thinking about it 
all. I never get any peace.' 

" 'Is there somebody you want to live with?' 

" 'No. I wish there was. Then I should 
know. 9 

" T wonder if you would know,' said Patricia, 
in a low voice. 'Amy, do you really know what 
love is? Because I don't. I've sometimes let men 
kiss me, and it doesn't seem to matter in the least. 
I don't particularly want to kiss them, or to be 

[232] 



SWINNERTON: ANALYST OF LOVERS 

kissed. I've never seen anything in all the flirta- 
tion that goes on in dark corners. It's amusing 
once or twice ; but it becomes an awful bore. The 
men don't interest you. The thought of living 
with any of them just turns me sick.' ' 



in 



The analysis, in The Three Lovers, of Patricia 
Quin is done with that simplicity, quiet deftness 
and inoffensive frankness which is the hallmark of 
Mr. Swinnerton's fiction. And, coming at last to 
Nocturne, I fall back cheerfully upon the praise 
accorded that novel by H. G. Wells in his preface 
to it. Said Mr. Wells : 

"Such a writer as Mr. Swinnerton sees life and 
renders it with a steadiness and detachment and 
patience quite foreign to my disposition. He has 
no underlying motive. He sees and tells. His 
aim is the attainment of that beauty which comes 
with exquisite presentation. Seen through his 
art, life is seen as one sees things through a crystal 
lens, more intensely, more completed, and with 
less turbidity. There the business begins and ends 
for him. He does not want you or anyone to do 
anything. 

"Mr. Swinnerton is not alone among recent 
writers in this clear detached objectivity. But 
Mr. Swinnerton, like Mr. James Joyce, does not 
repudiate the depths for the sake of the surface. 

[233] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

His people are not splashes of appearance, but 
living minds. Jenny and Emmy in this book are 
realities inside and out ; they are imaginative crea- 
tures so complete that one can think with ease of 
Jenny ten years hence or of Emmy as a baby. 
The fickle Alf is one of the most perfect Cockneys 
— a type so easy to caricature and so hard to get 
true — in fiction. If there exists a better writing 
of vulgar lovemaking, so base, so honest, so touch- 
ingly mean and so touchingly full of the craving 
for happiness than this, I do not know of it. Only 
a novelist who has had his troubles can understand 
fully what a dance among china cups, what a skat- 
ing over thin ice, what a tight-rope performance is 
achieved in this astounding chapter. A false note, 
one fatal line, would have ruined it all. On the 
one hand lay brutality; a hundred imitative louts 
could have written a similar chapter brutally, 
with the soul left out, we have loads of such 
'strong stuff' and it is nothing; on the other side 
was the still more dreadful fall into sentimen- 
tality, the tear of conscious tenderness, the re- 
deeming glimpse of 'better things' in Alf or Emmy 
that could at one stroke have converted their 
reality into a genteel masquerade. The perfection 
of Alf and Emmy is that at no point does a 'na- 
ture's gentleman' or a 'nature's lady' show 
through and demand our refined sympathy. It is 
only by comparison with this supreme conversa- 
tion that the affair of Keith and Jenny seems to 
fall short of perfection. But that also is at last 

[234] 



SWINNERTON: ANALYST OF LOVERS 

perfected, I think, by Jenny's final, 'Keith . . . 
Oh, Keith! 

"Above these four figures again looms the ma- 
jestic invention of 'Pa.' Every reader can appre- 
ciate the truth and humour of Pa, but I doubt if 
anyone without technical experience can realise 
how the atmosphere is made and completed, and 
rounded off by Pa's beer, Pa's meals, and Pa's 
accident, how he binds the bundle and makes the 
whole thing one, and what an enviable triumph 
his achievement is. 

"But the book is before the reader and I will 
not enlarge upon its merits further. Mr. Swin- 
nerton has written four or five other novels before 
this one, but none of them compares with it in 
quality. His earlier books were strongly influ- 
enced by the work of George Gissing; they have 
something of the same fatigued greyness of tex- 
ture and little of the same artistic completeness 
and intense vision of Nocturne. 

"This is a book that will not die. It is per- 
fect, authentic and alive. Whether a large and 
immediate popularity will fall to it, I cannot say, 
but certainly the discriminating will find it and 
keep it and keep it alive. If Mr. Swinnerton were 
never to write another word I think he might 
count on this much of his work living, when many 
of the more portentous reputations of today may 
have served their purpose in the world and be- 
come no more than fading names." 

[235] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

iv 

Arnold Bennett has described Swinnerton per- 
sonally in a way no one else is likely to surpass. 
I will prefix a few elemental facts which he has 
neglected and then will let him have his say. 

Frank Arthur Swinnerton was born in Wood 
Green, England, in 1884, the youngest son of 
Charles Swinnerton and Rose Cottam. He mar- 
ried, a few years ago, Helen Dircks, a poet; her 
slim little book of verse, Passenger, was published 
with a preface by Mr. Swinnerton. His first three 
novels Swinnerton destroyed. His first novel to 
be published was The Merry Heart. It is inter- 
esting to know that Floyd Dell was the first 
American to appreciate Swinnerton. I make way 
for Mr. Bennett, who says : 

"One day perhaps eight or nine years ago I re- 
ceived a novel entitled The Casement. The book 
was accompanied by a short, rather curt note from 
the author, Frank Swinnerton, politely indicating 
that if I cared to read it he would be glad, and 
implying that if I didn't care to read it, he should 
endeavour still to survive. I would quote the let- 
ter but I cannot find it — no doubt for the reason 
that all my correspondence is carefully filed on 
the most modern filing system. I did not read 
The Casement for a long time. Why should I 
consecrate three irrecoverable hours or so to the 
work of a man as to whom I had no credentials*? 
Why should I thus introduce foreign matter into 

[236] 



SWINNERTON: ANALYST OF LOVERS 

the delicate cogwheels of my programme of read- 
ing*? However, after a delay of weeks, heaven in 
its deep wisdom inspired me with a caprice to pick 
up the volume. 

"I had read, without fatigue but on the other 
hand without passionate eagerness, about a hun- 
dred pages before the thought occurred suddenly 
to me : 'I do not remember having yet come across 
one single ready-made phrase in this story.' Such 
was my first definable thought concerning Frank 
Swinnerton. I hate ready-made phrases, which 
in my view — and in that of Schopenhauer — are 
the sure mark of a mediocre writer. I began to be 
interested. I soon said to myself: 'This fellow 
has a distinguished style.' I then perceived that 
the character-drawing was both subtle and origi- 
nal, the atmosphere delicious, and the movement 
of the tale very original, too. The novel stirred 
me — not by its powerfulness, for it did not set 
out to be powerful — bv* by its individuality and 
distinction. I thereupon wrote to Frank Swinner- 
ton. I forget entirely what I said. But I know 
that I decided that I must meet him. 

"When I came to London, considerably later, 
I took measures to meet him, at the Authors' Club. 
He proved to be young; I daresay twenty- four or 
twenty-five — medium height, medium looks, me- 
dium clothes, somewhat reddish hair, and lively 
eyes. If I had seen him in a motorbus I should 
never have said, C A remarkable chap' — no more 
than if I had seen myself in a motorbus. My im- 

[237] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

pressions of the interview were rather like my im- 
pressions of the book : at first somewhat negative, 
and only very slowly becoming positive. He was 
reserved, as became a young author; I was re- 
served, as became an older author; we were both 
reserved, as became Englishmen. Our views on 
the only important thing in the world — that is 
to say, fiction — agreed, not completely, but in 
the main ; it would never have done for us to agree 
completely. I was as much pleased by what he 
didn't say as by what he said; quite as much by 
the indications of the stock inside the shop as by 
the display in the window. The interview came 
to a calm close. My knowledge of him acquired 
from it amounted to this, that he held decided and 
righteous views upon literature, that his heart was 
not on .his sleeve, and that he worked in a pub- 
lisher's office during the day and wrote for himself 
in the evenings. 

"Then I saw no more **f Swinnerton for a rela- 
tively long period. I read other books of his. I 
read The Young Idea, and The Happy Family, 
and, I think, his critical work on George Gissing. 
The Happy Family marked a new stage in his 
development. It has some really piquant scenes, 
and it revealed that minute knowledge of middle- 
class life in the nearer suburbs of London, and 
that disturbing insight into the hearts and brains 
of quite unfashionable girls, which are two of his 
principal gifts. I read a sketch of his of a com- 
monplace crowd walking around a bandstand 

[238] 



SWINNERTON: ANALYST OF LOVERS 

which brought me to a real decision as to his quali- 
ties. The thing was like life, and it was bathed 
in poetry. 

"Our acquaintance proceeded slowly, and I 
must be allowed to assert that the initiative which 
pushed it forward was mine. It made a jump 
when he spent a week-end in the Thames Estuary 
on my yacht. If any reader has a curiosity to 
know what my yacht is not like, he should read 
the striking yacht chapter in Nocturne. I am 
convinced that Swinnerton evolved the yacht in 
Nocturne from my yacht; but he ennobled, mag- 
nified, decorated, enriched and bejewelled it till 
honestly I could not recognise my wretched vessel. 
The yacht in Nocturne is the yacht I want, ought 
to have, and never shall have. I envy him the 
yacht in Nocturne, and my envy takes a malicious 
pleasure in pointing out a mistake in the glowing 
scene. He anchors his yacht in the middle of the 
Thames — as if the tyrannic authorities of the 
Port of London would ever allow a yacht, or any 
other craft, to anchor in midstream ! 

"After the brief cruise our friendship grew 
rapidly. I now know Swinnerton — probably as 
well as any man knows him; I have penetrated 
into the interior of the shop. He has done several 
things since I first knew him — rounded the corner 
of thirty, grown a beard, under the orders of a 
doctor, and physically matured. Indeed, he 
looks decidedly stronger than in fact he is — he 
was never able to pass the medical examination 

[239] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

for the army. He is still in the business of pub- 
lishing, being one of the principal personages in 
the ancient and well-tried firm of Chatto & 
Windus, the English publishers of Swinburne and 
Mark Twain. He reads manuscripts, including 
his own — and including mine. He refuses manu- 
scripts, though he did accept one of mine. He 
tells authors what they ought to do and ought not 
to do. He is marvellously and terribly par- 
ticular and fussy about the format of the books 
issued by his firm. Questions as to fonts of type, 
width of margins, disposition of title-pages, tint 
and texture of bindings really do interest him. 
And misprints — especially when he has read the 
proofs himself — give him neuralgia and even 
worse afflictions. Indeed he is the ideal pub- 
lisher for an author. 

"Nevertheless, publishing is only a side-line of 
his. He still writes for himself in the evenings 
and at week-ends — the office never sees him on 
Saturdays. 

"Frank Swinnerton has other gifts. He is a 
surpassingly good raconteur. By which I do not 
signify that the man who meets Swinnerton for 
the first, second or third time will infallibly ache 
with laughter at his remarks. Swinnerton only 
blossoms in the right atmosphere; he must know 
exactly where he is; he must be perfectly sure of 
his environment, before the flower uncloses. And 
he merely relates what he has seen, what he has 
taken part in. The narrations would be naught 
[240] 



SWINNERTON: ANALYST OF LOVERS 

if he were not the narrator. His effects are helped 
by the fact that he is an excellent mimic and by 
his utter realistic mercilessness. But like all first- 
class realists he is also a romantic, and in his 
mercilessness there is a mysterious touch of funda- 
mental benevolence — as befits the attitude of one 
who does not worry because human nature is not 
something different from what it actually is. 
Lastly, in this connection, he has superlatively the 
laugh known as the 'infectious laugh.' When he 
laughs everybody laughs, everybody has to laugh. 
There are men who tell side-splitting tales with 
the face of an undertaker — for example, Irvin 
Cobb. There are men who can tell side-splitting 
tales and openly and candidly rollick in them 
from the first word; and of these latter is Frank 
Swinnerton. But Frank Swinnerton can be more 
cruel than Irvin Cobb. Indeed, sometimes when 
he is telling a story, his face becomes exactly like 
the face of Mephistopheles in excellent humour 
with the world's sinfulness and idiocy. 

"Swinnerton's other gift is the critical. It has 
been said that an author cannot be at once a first- 
class critic and a first-class creative artist. To 
which absurdity I reply: What about William 
Dean Howells'? And what about Henry James, 
to name no other names'? Anyhow, if Swinner- 
ton excels in fiction he also excels in literary criti- 
cism. The fact that the literary editor of the 
Manchester Guardian wrote and asked him to 
write literary criticism for the Manchester Guar- 

[241] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

dian will perhaps convey nothing to the American 
citizen. But to the Englishman of literary taste 
and experience it has enormous import. The 
Manchester Guardian publishes the most fastidi- 
ous and judicious literary criticism in Britain. 

'T recall that once when Swinnerton was in my 
house I had there also a young military officer 
with a mad passion for letters and a terrific ambi- 
tion to be an author. The officer gave me a manu- 
script to read. I handed it over to Swinnerton to 
read, and then called upon Swinnerton to criticise 
it in the presence of both of us. 'Your friend is 
very kind,' said the officer to me afterward, 'but 
it was a frightful ordeal.' 

"The book on George Gissing I have already 
mentioned. But it was Swinnerton' s work on 
R. L. Stevenson that made the trouble in London. 
It is a destructive work. It is bland and impar- 
tial, and not bereft of laudatory passages, but 
since its appearance Stevenson's reputation has 
never been the same." 

Books 
by Frank Swinnerton 

THE MERRY HEART 
THE YOUNG IDEA 
THE CASEMENT 
THE HAPPY FAMILY 

GEORGE GISSING I A CRITICAL STUDY 
R. L. STEVENSON! A CRITICAL STUDY 
[242] 



SWINNERTON: ANALYST OF LOVERS 

ON THE STAIRCASE 

THE CHASTE WIFE 

NOCTURNE 

SHOPS AND HOUSES 

SEPTEMBER 

COQUETTE 

THE THREE LOVERS 

Sources 
on Frank Swinnerton 

Who's Who [In England]. 

Frank Swinnerton: Personal Sketches by Arnold 

Bennett, H. G. Wells, Grant Overton. 

Booklet published by george h. doran 

company, 1920. 
Private Information. 



[243] 



Chapter XVI 

AN ARMFUL OF NOVELS, WITH NOTES ON 
THE NOVELISTS 



THE quiet, the calm, the extreme individual- 
ism, and the easy-going self -content of my 
birthplace and early habitat — the Eastern Shore 
of Maryland, have been, I fear, the dominating 
influences of my life," writes Sophie Kerr. 
"Thank heaven, I had a restless, energetic, and 
very bad-tempered father to leaven them, a man 
with a biting tongue and a kind heart, a keen 
sense of the ridiculous and a passion for honesty 
in speech and action. I, the younger of his two 
children, was his constant companion. I tagged 
after him, every day and all day. Even when I 
was very small he interested me — and very few 
fathers ever really interest their children. 

"The usual life of a girl in a small semi- 
Southern town was mine. I learned to cook, I 
made most of my own frocks, I embroidered ex- 
cessively, I played the violin worse than any other 
person in the world, I went away to college and 
I came back again. I wasn't a popular girl so- 

[2443 



AN ARMFUL OF NOVELS 

cially for two reasons. I had inherited my fa- 
ther's gift of sarcasm, and there was the even 
greater handicap of a beautiful, popular, socially 
malleable older sister. Beside her I was nowhere. 

"But I wanted to write, so I didn't care. I got 
my father to buy me a second-hand typewriter, 
and learned to run it with two fingers. And I 
wrote. I even sold some of the stuff. The Coun- 
try Gentleman bought one of my first stories, and 
the Ladies' World bought another. This was 
glorious. 

"Then I got a job on the Pittsburgh Chronicle- 
Telegraph, an afternoon newspaper owned by 
Senator Oliver. Later I went to The Gazette- 
Times, the morning paper also owned by the 
Senator. A few years later I came to New York 
and found a place on the staff of the Woman's 
Home Companion, eventually becoming Manag- 
ing Editor. Two years ago I resigned my edito- 
rial job to give all my time to writing. Of course 
I had been writing pretty steadily anyway, but 
holding my job too. 

"I had expected, when I gave up office work, to 
find my leisure time an embarrassment. I planned 
so many things to do, how I would see all my 
friends often, how I would travel, read, do all 
sorts of delightful things that double work had 
before made impossible. But I've done none of 
them. I haven't nearly as much time as I had 
when I hadn't any time at all, and that's the 
honest truth. 

[245] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

"If only I could arrange a multiple existence — 
one life for work; one for the machinery of life, 
housekeeping, getting clothes made, shopping; 
one for seeing my friends, travel, visiting; one life 
for the other diversions such as music, the theatre, 
clubs, politics, one life for just plain loafing. 
Now that would be wonderful. But to crowd it 
all into twenty-four hours a day — no, too much 
of it gets squeezed out. 

"What do I like the most*? Comfort, I think. 
And old painted satinwood, and cats and prize- 
fights, and dancing, and Spanish shawls, and look- 
ing at the ocean, and having my own way. And 
I dislike argument, and perfume, and fat women, 
and people who tell the sort of lies that simply 
insult your intelligence, and men who begin let- 
ters 'Dear Lady/ and long earrings, and intoler- 
ance." 

All of which is excellent preparation for the 
reader of Sophie Kerr's new novel, One Thing Is 
Certain. Those who read her Fainted Meadows 
will expect and will find in this new novel the 
same charming background, but they will find a 
much more dramatic story. Since the novel is one 
of surprise, with an event at its close which throws 
everything that went before in a new, a curious, a 
startling and profoundly significant light, I can- 
not indulge in any further description of it in this 
place. But I do wish to quote some sentences 
from a letter Sophie Kerr wrote me : 

"I wanted to show that when lives get out of 

[246] 



AN ARMFUL OF NOVELS 

plumb, the way to straighten them is not with a 
violent gesture. That when we do seize them, 
and try to jerk them straight again, we invariably 
let ourselves in for long years of unhappiness and 
remorse. Witness Louellen. In two desperate 
attempts ... she tries to change the whole cur- 
rent and colour of her life." 

So much for the essential character of the story, 
but there is a question in my mind as to what, in 
the story, readers will consider the true essential ! 
I think for very many it will not be the action, 
unusual and dramatic as that is, but the picture 
of a peculiar community, one typical of Mary- 
land's Eastern Shore, where we have farmer folk 
in whom there lives the spirit and tradition of a 
landed aristocracy. The true essential with such 
readers, will be the individuals who are drawn 
with such humour and skill, the mellowness of 
the scene; even such a detail as the culinary tri- 
umph that was Louellen's wedding dinner. A 
marvellous and incomparable meal! One reads 
of it, his mouth watering and his stomach crying 
out. 

ii 

The House of Five Swords, by Tristram 
Tupper, is a gallant representative of those novels 
which we are beginning to get in the inevitable 
reaction from such realism as Main Street and 
Moon-Calf, a romantic story of age and youth, of 
love and hate, of bitter unyielding hardness, and 

[247] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

of melting pity and tenderness. It begins with 
the Robin, age seven, with burnished curls, view- 
ing with awestruck delight five polished swords 
against the shining dark wall in Colonial House, 
where she had gone to deliver the Colonel's boots ! 
She forgot the boots. She lifted two of the 
swords from the wall, crossed them on the floor 
and danced the sword dance of Scotland. From 
the doorway a white-haired old figure watched 
with narrowed eyes and tightened mouth. Then 
the storm broke. . . . 

The House of Five Swords is Mr. Tupper's 
first novel. A native of Virginia, he has done 
newspaper work, has tramped a good deal and was 
fooling with the study of law when American 
troops were ordered to the Mexican border. After 
that experience he went overseas. On his return 
from the war, he tried writing and met with rapid 
success. 

iii 

Readers of Baroness Orczy's novels will wel- 
come Nicolette. 

This is essentially a love story, with the scene 
laid in the mountains of Provence in the early 
days of the Restoration of King Louis XVIII to 
the throne of France. An ancient half-ruined 
chateau perches among dwarf olives and mimosa, 
orange and lemon groves. There is a vivid con- 
trast between the prosperity of Jaume Deydier, a 
rich peasant-proprietor, and the grinding poverty 

[248] 



AN ARMFUL OF NOVELS 

of the proud and ancient family of de Ventadour, 
whose last scion, Bertrand, goes to seek fortune in 
Paris and there becomes affianced to a wealthy 
and beautiful heiress. Nicolette, the daugh- 
ter of Jaume Deydier, whose ancestor had been a 
lackey in the service of the Comte de Ventadour, 
is passionately in love with Bertrand, but a bitter 
feud keeps the lovers for long apart. 

There will be a new novel this autumn, Ann 
and Her Mother, by O. Douglas, whose Penny 
Plain gave great pleasure to its readers. "Penny 
plain," if you remember, was the way Jean de- 
scribed the lot of herself and her brothers whom 
she mothered in the Scottish cottage; but mat- 
ters were somewhat changed when romance 
crossed the threshold in the person of the Hon- 
ourable Pamela and a bitter old millionaire who 
came to claim the house as his own. 

Ann and Her Mother is the story of a Scotch 
family as seen through the eyes of the mother 
and her daughter. The author of Penny Plain 
and Ann and Her Mother is a sister of John 
Buchan, author of The Thirty-nine Steps, The 
Path of the King, and many other books. 

December Love, by Robert Hichens, will have 
a greater popularity than any of his novels since 
The Garden of Allah. It is a question whether 
this uncannily penetrative study of power and the 
need for love of a woman of sixty does not sur- 
pass The Garden of Allah. In Lady Sellingworth, 
Mr. Hichens is dealing with a brilliant woman. 

[249] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

The theme is daring and calls for both skill and 
delicacy. Of the action, one really should not 
say very much, lest one spoil the book for the 
reader. The loss of the Sellingworth jewels in 
Paris had caused a sensation in the midst of which 
Lady Sellingworth was silent. She declined to 
discuss the disappearance of the jewels. There 
followed the advent at No. 4 Berkeley Square of 
Alick Craven, a man of thirty, vigorous, attrac- 
tive and decidedly a somebody. But inexplicably 
— at any rate without explanation — Lady Selling- 
worth retired from society when Craven appeared. 

Tell England by Ernest Raymond is a novel 
which has been sensationally successful in Eng- 
land. It is a war story and I will give you some 
of the opening paragraphs of the "Prologue by 
Padre Monty" : 

"In the year that the Colonel died he took little 
Rupert to see the swallows fly away. I can find 
no better beginning than that. 

"When there devolved upon me as a labour of 
love the editing of Rupert Ray's book, Tell Eng- 
land, I carried the manuscript to my room one 
bright autumn afternoon and read it during the 
fall of a soft evening, till the light failed, and my 
eyes burned with the strain of reading in the dark. 
I could hardly leave his ingenuous tale to rise and 
turn on the gas. Nor, perhaps, did I want such 
artificial brightness. There are times when one 
prefers the twilight. Doubtless the tale held me 
fascinated because it revealed the schooldays of 
[250] 



AN ARMFUL OF NOVELS 

those boys whom I met in their young manhood 
and told afresh that wild old Gallipoli adventure 
which I shared with them. Though, sadly enough, 
I take Heaven to witness that I was not the ideal- 
ised creature whom Rupert portrays. God bless 
them, how these boys will idealise us ! 

"Then again, as Rupert tells you, it was I who 
suggested to him the writing of his story. And 
well I recall how he demurred, asking: 

" 'But what am I to write about*?' For he 
was always diffident and unconscious of his 
power. 

" 'Is Gallipoli nothing to write about?' I re- 
torted. 'And you can't have spent five years at a 
great public school like Kensington without one 
or two sensational things. Pick them out and let 
us have them. For whatever the modern theorists 
say, the main duty of a story-teller is certainly to 
tell stories.' " 

This prologue is followed by the novel which 
begins with English public school life in the 
fashion of Sonia and other novels American read- 
ers are familiar with. The main theme of the 
book is Gallipoli. 

The new novel by J. E. Buckrose is A Knight 
Among Ladies. Mrs. Buckrose says that the char- 
acter of Sid Dummeris in this book is modelled 
upon an actual person. "He did actually live in a 
remote country place where I used to stay a great 
deal when I was a child and as he has been gone 
twenty years, I thought I might employ my exact 

[251] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

memories of him without hurting anyone." This 
was in answer to questions asked by The Bookman 
(London) of a number of English writers. The 
London Bookman wanted to find out if novelists 
generally drew their characters from actual peo- 
ple. The replies showed that this proceeding was 
very rare. Mrs. Buckrose recalled only one other 
instance in which she had used an actual person 
in her fiction. Mrs. Buckrose is Mrs. Falconer 
Jameson. She lives at Hornsea, East Yorkshire, 
and says: 

"My real hobby is my writing — as it was my 
secret pleasure from the age of nine until I was 
over thirty when I first attempted to publish. I 
look after my chickens, my house and a rather 
delicate husband; write my books and try to do 
my duty to my neighbour !" 

iv 

Back of the new novel by Margaret Culkin 
Banning, Spellbinders, is the question: Has the 
vote and its consequent widening of the mental 
horizon introduced a brand new element of dis- 
cord or a factor for mutual support into modern 
marriage? The household of the George Flan- 
dons was almost wrecked by it. That his wife 
should accept the opportunity to play her part in 
State and National affairs seemed to George 
Flandon a desertion of her real duty. 

Mrs. Banning has written a novel which will 
[252] 



AN ARMFUL OF NOVELS 

surprise those who remember her only by her first 
novel, This Marrying. The surprise will be less 
for those who read her second novel, Half Loaves, 
for they must have been struck by the real under- 
standing she showed of the married relationship 
and the marked increase in her skill as a writer. 
Spellbinders is the sort of work one looks for after 
such a good novel as Half Loaves. 

Mrs. Banning, who was married in 1914, lives 
in Duluth. A graduate of Vassar, her first novel 
was written in one of Margaret Mayo's cottages 
at Harmon, New York. She is of purely Irish 
ancestry, related to the Plunkett family which 
bred both statesmen and revolutionaries for Ire- 
land. On the other side there was a Colonel Cul- 
kin, who, Mrs. Banning says, "came over at the 
time of the Revolution but unfortunately fought 
on the wrong side, so we forget him and begin our 
Culkin lineage in this country with the Culkin who 
came over at the famous time of the 'potato-rot.' " 
That would be the Irish famine of 1846, no doubt. 

Sunny-San, Onoto Watanna's first novel in six 
years, has been the signal for her re-entrance not 
only into the world of fiction, but the world of 
motion pictures and plays. Even before Sunny- 
San was ready as a book, the motion picture pro- 
ducers were on the author's track. A large sum 
was paid cash down for the picture rights to the 
novel and then the prospect of a picture was laid 
aside while the possibilities of a play were esti- 
mated. These were seen to be exceptionally good. 

[253] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

Here was a story of young American boys travel- 
ling in Japan and coming upon a still younger 
Japanese girl, threatened with cruelty and unhap- 
piness. The young men endowed Sunny-San, so 
to speak, planking down enough money to secure 
her protection and education. Thereupon they 
continued blithely on their travels and forgot all 
about her. 

Some years later a well-educated, dainty and 
exceedingly attractive Japanese girl presents her- 
self on the doorstep of a house in New York where 
one of the young men resides. Situation ! What 
shall the young man do with his charming and 
unexpected protegee! In view of the prolonged 
success of Fay Bainter in the play, East Is West, 
it was obviously the thing to make a play out of 
Sunny-San. And this, I believe, is being done as 
I write. In the meantime Onoto Watanna, who 
is really Mrs. Winnif red Reeve, and who lives on 
a ranch near Calgary, Canada, is very busy with 
her Canadian stories which have excited the en- 
thusiasm of magazine editors. I am confident 
that she will do a Canadian novel; the more so 
because she tells me that, despite the success of 
Sunny-San and the enormous success of her 
earlier Japanese stories, like A Japanese Nightin- 
gale, her interest is really centred at present in 
Canada, its people and backgrounds. 



[254] 



AN ARMFUL OF NOVELS 



Pending Dorothy Speare's second novel, let me 
suggest that those who have not done so read her 
first, Dancers in the Dark. That a young woman 
just out of Smith College should write this novel, 
that the novel should then begin immediately sell- 
ing at a great rate, and that David Belasco should 
demand a play constructed from the novel is alto- 
gether a sequence to cause surprise. I have had 
letters from older people who said frankly that 
they could not express themselves about Dancers 
in the Dark, because it dealt with a life with 
which they were utterly unfamiliar — which, in 
some cases, they did not know existed. And yet it 
does exist ! The demand for the book, the avidity 
with which it has been read and the intemperance 
with which it has been discussed testify that in 
Dancers in the Dark Miss Speare wrote a book 
with truth in it. I suppose it might be said of her 
first novel — though I should not agree in saying 
it — that, like F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of 
Paradise, it had every conceivable fault except 
the fatal fault; it did not fail to live. The 
amount of publicity that this book received was 
astonishing. I have handled clippings from 
newspapers all over the country — and not mere 
"items" but "spreads' with pictures — in which 
the epigrammatic utterances of the characters in 
Dancers were reprinted and their truth or falsity 
debated hotly. Is the modern girl an "excitement 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

eater"? Does she "live from man to man and 
never kill off a man" % There was altogether too 
much smoke and heat in the controversy for one 
to doubt the existence, underneath the surface of 
Miss Speare's fiction, of glowing coals. And Miss 
Speare? Well, it is a fact that, like her heroine 
in Dancers, she has an exceptional voice; and I 
understand that she intends to cultivate the voice 
and to continue as a writer, both. That is a very 
difficult programme to lay out for one's self, but 
I really believe her capable of succeeding in both 
halves of the programme. 

Another distinctly popular novel, The Moon 
Out of Reach, by Margaret Pedler, is the fruit of 
a well-developed career as a novelist. The Her- 
mit of Far End, The House of Dreams Come 
True, The La?np of Fate, and The Splendid 
Folly were the forerunners of this immediate and 
distinct success. Mrs. Pedler is the wife of a 
sportsman well known in the West of England, 
the nearest living descendant of Sir Francis 
Drake. They have a lovely home in the country 
and Mrs. Pedler, besides the joys of her writing, 
is a collector of old furniture and china and a 
devotee of driving, tennis and swimming. It is 
interesting that as a girl she studied at the Royal 
Academy of Music with a view to being a profes- 
sional singer. Marriage diverted her from that, 
but she still retains her interest in music; and it 
is characteristic of such novels as The Splendid 
Folly and The Moon Out of Reach that a lyric 

[2561 



AN ARMFUL OF NOVELS 

appearing in the book embodies the theme of the 
story. These lyrics of Mrs. Pedler's have mostly 
been set to music. 

What shall I say about Corra Harris's The 
Eyes of Love except that it offers such a study of 
marriage as only Mrs. Harris puts on paper? 
Shrewd and homely wisdom, sympathetic and 
ironical humour, the insight and the fundamental 
experience, — above all, imagination in experience 
— which made their first deep and wide impression 
with the publication of A Circuit Rider's Wife. 
I open The Eyes of Love at random and come 
upon such a passage as this, and then I don't won- 
der that men as well as women read Corra Harris 
and continue to read her : 

"Few women are ever related by marriage to 
the minds of their husbands. These minds are 
foreign countries where they discover themselves 
to be aliens, speaking another smaller language 
and practically incapable of mastering the man- 
ners and customs of that place. This is sometimes 
the man's fault, because his mind is not a fit place 
for a nice person like his wife to dwell, but more 
frequently it is the wife's fault, who is not willing 
to associate intimately with the hardships that 
inhabit the mind of a busy man, who has no time 
to ornament that area with ideas pertaining to the 
finer things. So it happens that both of them 
prefer this divorce, the man because the woman 
gets in the way with her scruples and emotions 
when he is about to do business without reference 

[257] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

to either; the woman because it is easier to keep 
on the domestic periphery of her husband, where 
she thinks she knows him and is married to him 
because she knows what foods he likes, and the 
people he prefers to have asked to dine when she 
entertains, the chair that fits him, the large pillow 
or the small one he wants for his tired old head at 
night, the place where the light must be when he 
reads in the evening rather than talk to her, be- 
cause there is nothing to talk about, since she is 
only the wife of his bosom and not of his head." 



VI 



Phyllis Bottome is just as interesting as her 
novels. When scarcely more than a child with 
large, delightful eyes, she began to write, and 
completed at the age of seventeen a novel which 
Andrew Lang advised an English publisher to 
accept. Thereafter she wrote regularly and with 
increasing distinction. Ill-health drove her to 
Switzerland where, living for some years, she met 
all kinds of people from all the countries of Eu- 
rope and America as well. 

It is interesting that her father was an Ameri- 
can, although after his marriage to an English- 
woman, he settled in England. Later Mr. Bot- 
tome came to America and for six years during 
Phyllis Bottome's childhood he was rector of 
Grace Church at Jamaica, New York. Phyllis 
Bottome is the wife of A. E. Forbes Dennis, who, 

[258] 



AN ARMFUL OF NOVELS 

recovering from dangerous wounds in the war, has 
been serving as passport officer at Vienna. They 
were married in 1917. Those v/ho know Phyllis 
Bottome personally say that the striking thing 
about her is the extent of her acquaintance with 
people of all sorts and conditions of life and her 
ready and unfailing sympathy with all kinds of 
people. She herself says that she "has had friends 
who live humdrum and simple lives and friends 
whose stories would bring a rush of doubt to the 
most credulous believer in fiction." "My friend- 
ships have included workmen, bargees, actresses, 
clergymen, thieves, scholars, dancers, soldiers, 
sailors and even the manager of a bank. It would 
be true of me to say that as a human being I prefer 
life to art, even if it would at the same time be 
damning to admit that I know much more about 
it. I have no preferences; men, women, children, 
animals and nature under every aspect seem to me 
a mere choice of miracles. I have not perhaps 
many illusions, but I have got hold of one or two 
certainties. I believe in life and I know that it is 
very hard." 

The hardness of life, its uproar, its agony, its 
magnificence and its duty, is the theme of Phyllis 
Bottome's latest and finest novel. When it was 
published, because it was so different from Phyllis 
Bottome's earlier work, I tried to draw attention 
to it by a letter in which I said : 

"I don't know whether you read J. C. Snaith's 
The Sailor. People said Snaith got his sugges- 

[259] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

tion from the life of John Masefield. The 
Sailor sold many thousands and people recall the 
book today, years afterward. But, as an ex- 
sailor and a few other things, I never found 
Snaith's 'Enry 'Arper half so convincing as Jim 
Barton in Phyllis Bottome's new novel, The King- 
fisher. 

"Jim, a boy of the slums, reaching toward 'that 
broken image of the mind of God — human love/ 
goes pretty deeply into me. Since reading those 
last words of the book — 'Beauty touched him. It 
was as if he saw, with a flash of jewelled wings, 
a Kingfisher fly home' — I keep going back and re- 
reading bits. . . . 

"Won't you tackle The Kingfisher? If you'll 
read to the bottom of page 51, I'll take a chance 
beyond that. Read that far and then, if you stop 
there, I've no word to say." 

Although this letter called for no special reply, 
I received dozens of replies promising to read the 
book and then enthusiastic comments after hav- 
ing read the book. I do not consider The King- 
fisher the greatest book Phyllis Bottome will 
write, but it marks an important advance in her 
work and it is a novel whose positive merits will 
last; it will be as moving and as significant ten 
years from now as it is today. 

vii 

I come to a group of novels of which the chief 
aim of all except two is entertainment. The 

[260] 



AN ARMFUL OF NOVELS 

Return of Alfred \ by the anonymous author of 
Patricia Brent, Spinster, is the diverting narra- 
tive of a man who found himself in another man's 
shoes. What made it particularly difficult was 
that the other man had been a very bad egg, in- 
deed. And there was, as might have been feared 
(or anticipated), a girl to complicate matters 
tremendously. 

E. F. Benson's Peter is the story of a young 
man who made a point of being different, of keep- 
ing his aloofness and paying just the amount of 
charm and gaiety required for the dinners and 
opera seats which London hostesses so gladly 
proffered. Then he married Silvia, not for her 
money exactly, but he certainly would not have 
asked her if she hadn't had money. No wonder 
E. F. Benson has a liberal and expectant audi- 
ence! In Peter he shows an exquisite under- 
standing of the quality of the love between Peter 
and his boyish young wife. 

A. A. Milne is another name to conjure with 
among those who love humour and charm, gentle- 
ness and a quiet shafting of the human depths. 
There is his novel, Mr. Pim. Old Mr. Pirn, in 
his gentle way, shuffled into the Mardens' charm- 
ing household. Mr. Pim said a few words and 
went absentmindedly away, — leaving Mr. Mar- 
den with the devastating knowledge that his wife 
was no wife, that her first husband, instead of 
lying quietly in his grave in Australia, had just 
landed in England. In short, the Mardens had 

[261] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

been living in sin for five years ! Then Mr. Pirn 
came back for his forgotten hat and the Marden 
household was again revolutionised. 

Beauty for Ashes, by Joan Sutherland, is a 
story with a more serious theme. It really raises 
the question whether a man who has wrongly 
been named as co-respondent is in honour bound 
to marry the defendant. The affair of Lady 
Madge with Lord Desmond was an entirely inno- 
cent one, despite what London said. Lady 
Madge's husband, wrought upon by shame and 
anger, began his action for divorce ; and Desmond 
found himself not merely face to face with dis- 
honour but bound by conventional honour for 
life to a girl with whom he had simply been 
friendly. 

William Rose Benet had been known chiefly as 
a poet until the publication of his first novel, 
The First Person Singular. The scene of The 
First Person Singular shifts between the kinetic 
panorama of modern New York and the some- 
what stultifying quietude of a small Pennsyl- 
vania town. A mysterious Mrs. Ventress is the 
centre of its rapidly unfolding series of peculiar 
situations. Mrs. Ventress is a puzzle to the 
townspeople. They believe odd things about her. 
The particular family in Tupton with which she 
comes in contact is an eccentric one. The father 
is a recluse — for reasons. His adopted daughter, 
Bessie Gedney, is an odd character among young 
girls in fiction. Dr. Gedney' s real daughter had 
[262] 



AN ARMFUL OF NOVELS 

disappeared years before. Why*? What has be- 
come of her'? This complicates the mystery. 

The First Person Singular is a light novel, 
avowedly without the heavy "significance" and 
desperately drab realism of many modern novels. 
And yet it flashes with tragedy and implicates 
grim spiritual struggle without tearing any pas- 
sion to tatters. The author's touch is light, the 
variety of his characters furnish him much diver- 
sion. The amusing side of each situation does 
not escape him. His style has a certain efferves- 
cent quality, but, for all that, the tragic develop- 
ments of the story are not shirked. 

Another treatment of a problem of marriage, a 
treatment sympathetic but robust, is found in the 
new novel of F. E. Mills Young, The Stronger 
Influence. Like Miss Mills Young's earlier 
novels, Imprudence and The Almonds of Life, the 
scene of The Stronger Influence is British Africa. 
The story is of the choice confronting a girl upon 
whom two men have a vital claim. 

To be somebody is more ethical than to serve 
somebody. The individual has not only a right 
but an obligation to sacrifice family entangle- 
ments in the cause of a necessary personal inde- 
pendence. This is the attitude expressed in 
Richard Blaker's novel, The Voice in the Wilder- 
ness. The story centres around the figure of 
Charles Petrie, popular playwright in London but 
known in Pelchester merely as a shabby fellow 
and to his family a singularly sarcastic and an- 

[263] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

noying father. Sarcasm was Petrie's one defence 
against the limp weight that was Mrs. Petrie. 
His children would have been astonished to hear 
him called a charming man of the world, yet he 
was. It is probable that he never would have 
come out into the open to combat if he hadn't 
been moved constantly to interfere and save his 
daughter Cynthia from offering herself as a will- 
ing sacrifice to her mother. Richard Blaker is new 
to America, a novelist of acutely pointed char- 
acterisations and careful atmosphere. 



via 



Nene, the work of an unknown French school 
teacher, a novel distinguished in France by the 
award of the Goncourt Prize as the most distin- 
guished French novel of the year 1920, had sold 
at this writing 400,000 copies in France. Three 
months after publication, it had sold in this coun- 
try less than 3,000 copies. 

I am glad to say that it was sufficient to draw 
to the attention of Americans this deplorable dis- 
crepancy to arouse interest in the novel. People 
of so divergent tastes as William Lyon Phelps, 
Corra Harris, Ralph Connor, Walter Prichard 
Eaton, Mary Johnston, Dorothy Speare and 
Richard LeGallienne have been at pains to ex- 
press the feeling to which Nene has stirred them. 
I have not space to quote them all, and so select 

[264] 



AN ARMFUL OF NOVELS 

as typical the comment of Walter Prichard 
Eaton : 

"I read Nine with great interest, especially be- 
cause of its relation to Maria Chapdelaine. It 
seems to me the two books came out most happily 
together. Maria Chapdelaine gives us the French 
peasant in the new world, touched with the 
pioneer spirit, and though close to the soil in con- 
stant battle with nature, somehow always master 
of his fate. Nine gives us this same racial stock, 
again close to the soil, but an old-world soil its 
fathers worked, and the peasant here seems ringed 
around with those old ghosts, their prejudices and 
their passions. I have seldom read any book 
which seemed to me so unerringly to capture the 
enveloping atmosphere of place and tradition, as 
it conditions the lives of people, and yet to do it 
so (apparently) artlessly. This struck me so 
forcibly that it was not till later I began to realise 
with a sigh — if one himself is a writer, a sigh of 
envy — that Nine has a directness, a simplicity, 
a principle of internal growth or dramatic life 
of its own, which, alas ! most of us are incapable 
of attaining." 

The author of Carnival, Sinister Street, 
Flasher's Mead; of those highly comedic novels, 
Poor Relations and Rich Relatives; of other and 
still more diverse fiction, Compton Mackenzie, 
has turned to a new task. His fine novel, The 
Altar Steps, concerns itself with a young priest 
of the Church of England. We live in the Eng- 

[265] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

land of Lytton Strachey's Queen Victoria — the 
England of 1880 to the close of the Boer War 
— as we follow Mark Lidderdale from boyhood 
to his ordination. The Altar Steps, it is known, 
will be followed by a novel probably to be called 
The Parson's Progress. Evidently Mr. Macken- 
zie is bent upon a fictional study of the whole 
problem of the Church of England in relation to 
our times, and particularly the position of the 
Catholic party in the Church. 

"Simon Pure," who writes the monthly letter 
from London appearing in The Bookman (and 
whose identity is a well-known secret!) thus de- 
scribes, in The Bookman for September, 1922, a 
visit to Mr. Mackenzie: 

"I have recently seen the author of The Altar 
Steps upon his native heath. The Altar Steps is 
the latest work of Compton Mackenzie, and it has 
done something to rehabilitate him with the 
critics. The press has been less fiercely adverse 
than usual to the author. He is supposed to have 
come back to the fold of the 'serious' writers, and 
so the fatted calf has been slain for him. We 
shall see. My own impression is that Mackenzie 
is a humorous writer, and that the wiseacres who 
want the novel to be 'serious' are barking up the 
wrong tree. At any rate, there the book is, and 
it is admitted to be a good book by all who have 
been condemning Mackenzie as a trifler; and 
Mackenzie is going on with his sequel to it in the 
pleasant land of Italy. I did not see him in Italy, 
[266] 



AN ARMFUL OF NOVELS 

but in Herm, one of the minor Channel Islands. 
It took me a night to reach the place — a night of 
fog and fog-signals — a night of mystery, with the 
moon full and the water shrouded — and morning 
found the fog abruptly lifted, and the islands be- 
fore our eyes. They glittered under a brilliant 
sun. There came hurried disembarking, a trans- 
ference (for me, and after breakfast) to a small 
boat called, by the owner's pleasantry, 'Watch 
Me' (Compton Mackenzie), and then a fine sail 
(per motor) to Herm. I said to the skipper that 
I supposed there must be many dangerous sub- 
merged rocks. 'My dear fellow!' exclaimed the 
skipper, driven to familiarity by my naivete. And 
with that we reached the island. Upon the end 
of a pier stood a tall figure, solitary. 'My host !' 
thought I. Not so. Merely an advance guard: 
his engineer. We greeted — my reception being 
that of some foreign potentate — and I was led up 
a fine winding road that made me think of Samoa 
and Vailima and all the beauties of the South 
Seas. Upon the road came another figure — this 
time a young man who made a friend of me at a 
glance. He now took me in hand. Together we 
made the rest of the journey along this beautiful 
road, and to the cottage of residence. I entered. 
There was a scramble. At last I met my host, 
who leapt from bed to welcome me ! 

"From that moment my holiday was delight- 
ful. The island is really magnificent. Short of 
a stream, it has everything one could wish for in 

[267] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

such a place. It has cliffs, a wood, a common, 
fields under cultivation, fields used as pasture, 
caves, shell beaches, several empty cottages. Its 
bird life is wealthy in cuckoos and other magic- 
bringers; its flowers have extraordinary interest; 
dogs and cattle and horses give domestic life, and 
a boat or two may be used for excursions to 
Jethou, a smaller island near by. And Mac- 
kenzie has this ideal place to live in for as much 
of the year as he likes. None may gather there 
without his permission. He is the lord of the 
manor, and his boundaries are the sea and the sky. 
We walked about the islands, and saw their 
beauties, accompanied by a big dog — a Great 
Dane — which coursed rabbits and lay like a dead 
fish in the bottom of a small boat. And as each 
marvel of the little paradise presented itself, I 
became more and more filled with that wicked 
thing, envy. But I believe envy does not make 
much progress when the owner of the desired ob- 
ject so evidently appreciates it with more gusto 
even than the envious one. Reason is against 
envy in such a case. To have said, 'He doesn't 
appreciate it' would have been a lie so manifest 
that it did not even occur to me. He does. That 
is the secret of Mackenzie's personal ability to 
charm. He is filled with vitality, but he is also 
filled with the power to take extreme delight in 
the delight of others and to better it. Moreover, 
he gives one the impression of understanding 
islands. Herm has been in his possession for 

[268] 



AN ARMFUL OF NOVELS 

something more than a year, and he has lived 
there continuously all that time (except for two or 
three visits to London, of short duration) . It has 
been in all his thoughts. He has seen it as a 
whole. He knows it from end to end, its rocks, 
its birds, its trees and flowers and paths. What 
wonder that his health is magnificent, his spirits 
high! What wonder the critics have seen fit to 
praise The Altar Steps as they have not praised 
anything of Mackenzie's for years'? If they had 
seen Herm, they could have done nothing at all 
but praise without reserve." 



[269] 



Chapter XVII 

THE HETEROGENEOUS MAGIC OF 
MAUGHAM 



NOW, I don't know where to begin. Prob- 
ably I shall not know where to leave off, 
either. That is my usual misfortune, to write a 
chapter at both ends. It is a fatal thing, like the 
doubly-consuming candle. Perhaps I might start 
with the sapience of Hector MacQuarrie, author 
of Tahiti Days. I am tempted to, because so 
many people think of W. Somerset Maugham as 
the author of The Moon and Sixpence. The day 
will come, however, when people will think of 
him as the man who wrote Of Human Bondage. 
This novel does not need praise. All it needs, 
like the grand work it is, is attention; and that 
it increasingly gets. 

ii 

Theodore Dreiser reviewed Of Human Bond- 
age for the New Republic. I reprint part of 
what he said : 
[270] 




W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM 



[271] 



HETEROGENEOUS MAGIC OF MAUGHAM 

"Sometimes in retrospect of a great book the 
mind falters, confused by the multitude and yet 
the harmony of the detail, the strangeness of the 
frettings, the brooding, musing intelligence that 
has foreseen, loved, created, elaborated, perfected, 
until, in the middle ground which we call life, 
somewhere between nothing and nothing, hangs 
the perfect thing which we love and cannot un- 
derstand, but which we are compelled to confess 
a work of art. It is at once something and noth- 
ing, a dream of happy memory, a song, a bene- 
diction. In viewing it one finds nothing to criti- 
cise or to regret. The thing sings, it has colour. 
It has rapture. You wonder at the loving, patient 
care which has evolved it. 

"Here is a novel or biography or autobiography 
or social transcript of the utmost importance. To 
begin with, it is unmoral, as a novel of this kind 
must necessarily be. The hero is born with a club 
foot, and in consequence, and because of a tem- 
perament delicately attuned to the miseries of life, 
suffers all the pains, recessions, and involute self 
tortures which only those who have striven handi- 
capped by what they have considered a blighting 
defect can understand. He is a youth, therefore, 
with an intense craving for sympathy and under- 
standing. He must have it. The thought of his 
lack, and the part which his disability plays in it 
soon becomes an obsession. He is tortured, 
miserable. 

"Curiously the story rises to no spired climax. 

[273] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

To some it has apparently appealed as a drab, un- 
relieved narrative. To me at least it is a gor- 
geous weave, as interesting and valuable at the 
beginning as at the end. There is material in its 
three hundred thousand or more words for many 
novels and indeed several philosophies, and even 
a religion or stoic hope. There are a series of 
women, of course — drab, pathetic, enticing as the 
case may be, — who lead him through the mazes 
of sentiment, sex, love, pity, passion; a wonder- 
ful series of portraits and of incidents. There 
are a series of men friends of a peculiarly inclu- 
sive range of intellectuality and taste, who lead 
him, or whom he leads, through all the in- 
tricacies of art, philosophy, criticism, humour. 
And lastly comes life itself, the great land and 
sea of people, England, Germany, France, bat- 
tering, corroding, illuminating, a Goyaesque 
world. 

"Naturally I asked myself how such a book 
would be received in America, in England. In 
the latter country I was sure, with its traditions 
and the Athenseum and the Saturday Review, it 
would be adequately appreciated. Imagine my 
surprise to find that the English reviews were al- 
most uniformly contemptuous and critical on 
moral and social grounds. The hero was a weak- 
ling, not for a moment to be tolerated by sound, 
right-thinking men. On the other hand, in Amer- 
ica the reviewers for the most part have seen its 
true merits and stated them. Need I say, how- 

[274] 



HETEROGENEOUS MAGIC OF MAUGHAM 

ever, that the New York World finds it 'the senti- 
mental servitude of a poor fool,' or that the Phila- 
delphia Press sees fit to dub it 'futile Philip,' or 
that the Outlook feels that 'the author might have 
made his book true without making it so fre- 
quently distasteful' ; or that the Dial cries 'a most 
depressing impression of the futility of life' ? 

"Despite these dissonant voices it is still a book 
of the utmost import, and has so been received. 
Compact of the experiences, the dreams, the 
hopes, the fears, the disillusionments, the rup- 
tures, and the philosophising of a strangely 
starved soul, it is a beacon light by which the 
wanderer may be guided. Nothing is left out; 
the author writes as though it were a labour of 
love. It bears the imprint of an eager, almost 
consuming desire to say truly what is in his heart. 

"Personally, I found myself aching with pain 
when, yearning for sympathy, Philip begs the 
wretched Mildred, never his mistress but on his 
level, to no more than tolerate him. He finally 
humiliates himself to the extent of exclaiming, 
'You don't know what it means to be a cripple !' 
The pathos of it plumbs the depths. The death 
of Fannie Price, of the sixteen-year-old mother 
in the slum, of Cronshaw, and the rambling 
agonies of old Ducroz and of Philip himself, are 
perfect in their appeal. 

"There are many other and all equally brilliant 
pictures. No one short of a genius could rout the 
philosophers from their lairs and label them as 

[275] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

individuals 'tempering life with rules agreeable 
to themselves' or could follow Mildred Rogers, 
waitress of the London ABC restaurant, through 
all the shabby windings of her tawdry soul. No 
other than a genius endowed with an immense 
capacity for understanding and pity could have 
sympathised with Fannie Price, with her futile 
and self-destructive art dreams ; or old Cronshaw, 
the wastrel of poetry and philosophy; or Mons. 
Ducroz, the worn-out revolutionary; or Thorne 
Athelny, the caged grandee of Spain; or Leonard 
Upjohn, airy master of the art of self-advance- 
ment ; or Dr. South, the vicar of Blackstable, and 
his wife — these are masterpieces. They are mar- 
vellous portraits ; they are as smooth as a Vermeer, 
as definite as a Hals; as brooding and moving as 
a Rembrandt. The study of Carey himself, while 
one sees him more as a medium through which 
the others express themselves, still registers photo- 
graphically at times. He is by no means a brood- 
ing voice but a definite, active, vigorous character. 
"If the book can be said to have a fault it will 
lie for some in its length, 300,000 words, or for 
others in the peculiar reticence with which the 
last love affair in the story is handled. Until the 
coming of Sallie Athelny all has been described 
with the utmost frankness. No situation, how- 
ever crude or embarrassing, has been shirked. In 
the matter of the process by which he arrived at 
the intimacy which resulted in her becoming preg- 
nant not a word is said. All at once, by a slight 

[276] 



HETEROGENEOUS MAGIC OF MAUGHAM 

frown which she subsequently explains, the truth 
is forced upon you that there has been a series of 
intimacies which have not been accounted for. 
After Mildred Rogers and his relationship with 
Norah Nesbit it strikes one as strange. . . . 

"One feels as though one were sitting before a 
splendid Shiraz or Daghestan of priceless texture 
and intricate weave, admiring, feeling, respond- 
ing sensually to its colours and tones. Mr. 
Maugham . . . has suffered for the joy of the 
many who are to read after him. By no willing 
of his own he has been compelled to take life by 
the hand and go down where there has been little 
save sorrow and degradation. The cup of gall 
and wormwood has obviously been lifted to his 
lips and to the last drop he has been compelled 
to drink it. Because of this, we are enabled to 
see the rug, woven of the tortures and delights 
of a life. We may actually walk and talk with 
one whose hands and feet have been pierced with 
nails." 

iii 

I turn, for a different example of the hetero- 
geneous magic of Maugham, including his ability 
to create and sustain a mood in his readers, to 
the words of Mr. MacQuarrie, who writes : 

"It was Tahiti. With a profound trust in my 
discretion, or perhaps an utter ignorance of the 
homely fact that people have their feelings, a 
London friend sent us a copy of The Moon and 

[277] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

Sixpence. This friend, actually a beautiful, well 
set up woman of the intelligent class in England 
(which is more often than not the upper fringes 
or spray of the bourgeoisie), wrote: 'You will be 
interested in this book, since quite the most charm- 
ing portion of it deals with your remote island of 
Tahiti. I met the author last night at Lady 

B 's. I think the landlady at the end, Mrs. 

Johnson, is a perfect darling/ 

"Knowing Somerset Maugham as a dramatist, 
the author of that kind of play which never bored 
one, but rather sent one home suffused with pleas- 
antness, I opened the book with happy anticipa- 
tion. Therefore — and the title of the book, The 
Moon and Sixpence, gave a jolly calming reac- 
tion — I was surprised and frankly annoyed when 
I found myself compelled to follow the fortunes 
of a large red-headed man with mighty sex ap- 
peal, who barged his way through female tears 
to a final goal which seemed to be a spiritual 
achievement, and a nasty death in a native fare. 
I was alarmed ; here was a man writing something 
enormously strong, when I had been accustomed 
to associate him with charming London nights — 
the theatre, perfect acting, no middle class prob- 
lems, a dropping of one's women folks at their 
doors and a return to White's and whiskey and a 
soda. And furthermore, in this book of his, he 
had picked up Lavina, the famous landlady of 
the Tiare Hotel, the uncrowned queen of Tahiti, 
and with a few strokes of his pen, had dissected 

[278] 



HETEROGENEOUS MAGIC OF MAUGHAM 

her, and exposed her to the world as she was. 
Here I must quote : 

: Tall and extremely stout, she would have 
been an imposing presence if the great good nature 
of her face had not made it impossible for her to 
express anything but kindliness. Her arms were 
like legs of mutton, her breasts like giant cab- 
bages; her face, broad and fleshy, gave you an 
impression of almost indecent nakedness and vast 
chin succeeded vast chin/ 

'This may seem a small matter in a great 
world. Tahiti is a small world, and this became 
a great matter. I read the book twice, decided 
that Somerset Maugham could no longer be re- 
garded as a pleasant liqueur, but rather as the 
joint of a meal requiring steady digestion, and 
suppressed The Moon and Sixpence on Tahiti. 
The temptation to lend it to a kindred spirit was 
almost unbearable, but the thought of Lavina 
hearing of the above description of her person 
frightened me and I resisted. For kindred souls, 
on Tahiti as elsewhere, have their own kindred 
souls, and slowly but surely the fact that a writer 
had described her arms as legs of mutton (per- 
fect!) and her breasts as huge cabbages (even 
better!) would have oozed its way to Lavina, 
sending her to bed for six days, with gloom spread 
over Tahiti and no cocktails. 

"All of which is a trifle by the way. Yet in 
writing of Somerset Maugham one must gaze 
along all lines of vision. And it seemed to me 

[279] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

that Tahiti in general, and Papeete in particular 
should supply a clear one; for here, certainly, in 
the days when Maugham visited the island a man 
could be mentally dead, spiritually naked and 
physically unashamed. I therefore sought Lavina 
one afternoon as she sat clothed as with a garment 
by the small side verandah of the Tiare Hotel. 
(Lavina was huge; the verandah was a small 
verandah as verandahs go; there was just room 
for me and a bottle of rum. ) 

" 'Lavina,' I remarked; 'many persons who 
write come to Tahiti/ 

" Tt is true,' she admitted, 'but not as the 
heavy rain, rather as the few drops at the end.' 

" 'Do you like them*?' I enquired. 

"One makes that kind of remark on Tahiti. 
The climate demands such, since the answer can 
be almost anything, a meandering spreading-of- 
weight kind of answer. 

" 'These are good men,' said Lavina steadily, 
wandering off into the old and possibly untrue 
story of a lady called Beatrice Grimshaw and her 
dilemma on a schooner in mid-Pacific, when the 
captain, a gentle ancient, thinking that the dark 
women were having it all their own way, offered 
to embrace Miss Grimshaw, finding in return a 
gun pointing at his middle, filling him with 
quaint surprise that anyone could possibly offer 
violence in defence of a soul in so delightful a 
climate. 

"After which and a rum cocktail, I said: 
[280] 



HETEROGENEOUS MAGIC OF MAUGHAM 

'Lavina, did you see much of M'sieur Somerset 
Maugham when he was here?' 

" e It is the man who writes*?' she inquired 
lazily. 

" It is/ I returned. 

" 'It is the beau gargon-ta-ta, neneenha roa?' 
she suggested. 

" 'Probably not,' I said; 'I suspect you are 
thinking, as usual, of Rupert Brooke. M'sieur 
Maugham may be regarded as beau, but he is not 
an elderly waiter of forty-seven, therefore we may 
not call him a g arc on? 

" 'It is,' Lavina admitted; 'that I am thinking 
of M'sieur Rupert, he is the beau gargon.' 

" 'But,' I said, 'I want to know what you 
thought of M'sieur Somerset Maugham*?' 

"Once started on Rupert Brooke, and Lavina 
would go on for the afternoon! 

" 'I respect M'sieur Morn,' said Lavina. 

"'Oh!' thought I; 'if she respects him, then 
I'm not going to get much.' 

" 'His French is not mixed,' she continued, re- 
ferring to Maugham's Parisian accent; 'I speak 
much with him, and he listen, with but a small 
question here, and one there. It is the pure 
French from Paris, as M'sieur le Governeur speak, 
who is the pig. But when he speak much, then 
it is like the coral which breaks.' 

"Lavina now wandered off permanently; it was 
impossible to bring her back. Her image of the 
brittle coral branches was a mild personality di- 

[281] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

rected at Maugham's stutter, which seldom es- 
capes the most sophisticated observer. For those 
who interview him always find well cut suitings, 
clean collars and the stutter, and very little else 
that they can lay hold of with any degree of 
honesty. Which only goes to prove my own 
opinion that Maugham, as an observer, refuses 
to have his own vision clogged by prying eyes at 
himself. 

"I expect that if my French had been better, 
I might have got some information about 
Maugham in Tahiti from the bland and badly 
built French officials who lurk in the official club 
near the Pomare Palace. I was reduced, in my 
rather casual investigation, to questioning natives 
and schooner captains. Once I felt confident of 
gaining a picture. I asked Titi of Taunoa. (Titi 
is the lady who figures a trifle disgracefully in 
Gauguin's Noanoa, the woman he found boring 
after a few weeks, her French blood being insuffi- 
ciently exotic to his spirit.) 

"Said Titi : 'M'sieur Morn? Yes, him I know ; 
he speak good French, and take the door down 
from the fare on which is the picture done by 
Gauguin of the lady whose legs are like thin 
pillows and her arms like fat ropes, very what 
you call strained, and funny.' 

"After which her remarks centred around a 
lover of her sister, who had just died at the age 
of seventy, and Titi considered that the denoue- 
ment made by Manu, the sister, was uncalled for 
[282] 



HETEROGENEOUS MAGIC OF MAUGHAM 

at the death bed, since the true and faithful wife 
stood there surrounded by nine children, all safely 
born the right side of the sheet. She did mention 
that the removal of the door from the fare caused 
the wind to enter. And although I often made 
inquiries, I never gained much information. 
Tahiti, as a whole, seemed unaware of Maugham's 
visit. 

"They may have adored him; but I suspect he 
was a quiet joy, the kind native Tahiti soon for- 
gets, certainly not the kind of joy she embodies 
in her national songs and himines. Such are the 
merry drunkards, inefficient though earnest white 
hulahula dancers and the plain (more than every- 
day) sinners who cut up rough with wild jagged 
edges and cruel tearings. 

"His occasional appearance at the French club 
would raise his status, removing any light touches 
with his junketings, perhaps turning them into 
dignified ceremonies. Which, for the Tahitian, 
approaches the end. The Tahitian never quite 
understands the white man who consorts with the 
French officials, although many do. Tor are not 
these men of Farane,' says the native, 'like the 
hen that talks without feathers?' — whatever that 
may mean, but it suggests at once the talkative 
Frenchman denuding himself on hot evenings, 
and wearing but the native pareu to hide portions 
of his bad figure. 

"But although, in some ways, Maugham hid 
himself from the natives and pleasant half-castes, 

[283] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

he saw them all right, and clearly, since the clos- 
ing pages of the The Moon and Sixpence display 
a magical picture of that portion of Tahiti he 
found time to explore." 



IV 

Mr. Maugham now offers us On a Chinese 
Screen, sketches of Chinese life, and East of Suez, 
his new play. 

There are fifty-eight sketches in On a Chinese 
Screen, portraits including European residents in 
China as well as native types. Here is a sample 
of the book, the little descriptive study with which 
it closes, entitled "A Libation to the Gods" : 

"She was an old woman, and her face was 
wizened and deeply lined. In her grey hair three 
long silver knives formed a fantastic headgear. 
Her dress of faded blue consisted of a long jacket, 
worn and patched, and a pair of trousers that 
reached a little below her calves. Her feet were 
bare, but on one ankle she wore a silver bangle. 
It was plain that she was very poor. She was 
not stout but squarely built and in her prime she 
must have done without effort the heavy work in 
which her life had been spent. She walked 
leisurely, with the sedate tread of an elderly 
woman, and she carried on her arm a basket. She 
came down to the harbour; it was crowded with 
painted junks; her eyes rested for a moment curi- 
ously on a man who stood on a narrow bamboo 

[284] 



HETEROGENEOUS MAGIC OF MAUGHAM 

raft, fishing with cormorants; and then she set 
about her business. She put down her basket on 
the stones of the quay, at the water's edge, and 
took from it a red candle. This she lit and fixed 
in a chink of the stones. Then she took several 
joss-sticks, held each of them for a moment in 
the flame of the candle and set them up around 
it. She took three tiny bowls and filled them 
with a liquid that she had brought with her in a 
bottle and placed them neatly in a row. Then 
from her basket she took rolls of paper cash and 
paper 'shoes' and unravelled them, so that they 
should burn easily. She made a little bonfire, 
and when it was well alight she took the three 
bowls and poured out some of their contents be- 
fore the smouldering joss-sticks. She bowed her- 
self three times and muttered certain words. She 
stirred the burning paper so that the flames burned 
brightly. Then she emptied the bowls on the 
stones and again bowed three times. No one took 
the smallest notice of her. She took a few more 
paper cash from her basket and flung them in the 
fire. Then, without further ado, she took up her 
basket, and with the same leisurely, rather heavy 
tread, walked away. The gods were duly pro- 
pitiated, and like an old peasant woman in 
France, who has satisfactorily done her day's 
housekeeping, she went about her business." 



[285] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 



W. Somerset Maugham was born in 1874, the 
son of Robert Ormond Maugham. He married 
Syrie, daughter of the late Dr. Barnardo. Mr. 
Maugham has a daughter. His education was 
got at King's School, Canterbury, at Heidelberg 
University and at St. Thomas's Hospital, London. 

Mr. Maugham's father was a comparatively 
prominent solicitor, responsible for the founda- 
tion of the Incorporated Society of Solicitors in 
England. Somerset Maugham, after studying 
medicine at Heidelberg, went to St. Thomas's, in 
the section of London known as Lambeth. He 
obtained his medical degree there. St. Thomas's 
just across the river from Westminster proved 
his medical ruin, and his literary birth. The 
hospital is situated on the border of the slum areas 
of South London where much that is hopeless, 
terrible, and wildly cheerful can be found. Per- 
sons are not wanting who hold that the slums of 
Battersea and Lambeth contain more misery and 
poverty than Limehouse, Whitechapel and the 
dark forest surrounding the Commercial Road 
combined. To St. Thomas's daily comes a pro- 
cession of battered derelicts, seeking attention 
from the young men in white tunics who hope to 
be doctors on their own account some day. To 
St. Thomas's came Eliza of Lambeth, came Liza's 
mother, came Jim and Tom. Here is the genesis 
of Maugham's first serious work, Liza of Lambeth. 
[286] 



HETEROGENEOUS MAGIC OF MAUGHAM 

It will be simpler and less confusing to deal 
with Somerset Maugham in the first instance as a 
maker of books rather than as a playwright. One 
cannot help believing that, while not one of his 
plays can be regarded as a pot boiler, they yet but 
seldom display that fervent purpose found in his 
books. Yet in his plays, one finds a greater at- 
tention to conventional technique and "form" 
than one finds in books like Of Human Bondage 
and The Moon and Sixpence. 

The first book launched by Somerset Maugham, 
Liza of Lambeth, could hardly have been, consid- 
ering its slight dimensions, a clearer indication of 
the line he was to follow. It came out at a time 
when Gissing was still in favour, and the odour 
of mean streets was accepted as synonymous with 
literary honesty and courage. There is certainly 
no lack of either about this idyll of Elizabeth 
Kemp of the lissome limbs and auburn hair. The 
story pursues its way, and one sees the soul of a 
woman shining clearly through the racy dialect 
and frolics of the Chingford beano, the rueful 
futility of faithful Thomas and the engaging 
callousness of Liza's mother. 

Somerset Maugham's next study in female por- 
traiture showed how far he could travel towards 
perfection. Mrs. Craddock, which is often called 
his best book, is a sex satire punctuated by four 
curtains, two of comedy and two of tragedy. This 
mixture of opposites should have been enough to 
damn it in the eyes of a public intent upon classi- 

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WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

fying everything by means of labels and of 
making everything so classified stick to its label 
like grim death. Yet the unclassified may flour- 
ish, and does, when its merit is beyond dispute. 
Mrs. Craddock appeared fully a decade before its 
time, when Victorian influences were still alive, 
and the modern idea for well to do women to have 
something to justify their existence was still in 
the nature of a novelty. Even in the fuller light 
of experience, Maugham could hardly have bet- 
tered his study of an impulsive and exigent 
woman, rising at the outset to the height of a bold 
and womanly choice in defiance of social prejudice 
and family tradition, and then relapsing under 
the disillusions of marriage into the weakest fail- 
ings of her class, rising again, from a self-tortur- 
ing neurotic into a kind of Niobe at the death of 
her baby. 

The ironic key of the book is at its best, in the 
passage half way through — 

"Mr. Craddock's principles, of course, were 
quite right; he had given her plenty of run and 
ignored her cackle, and now she had come home 
to roost. There is nothing like a knowledge of 
farming, and an acquaintance with the habits of 
domestic animals, to teach a man how to manage 
his wife." 

vi 

As a playwright Mr. Maugham is quite as well 
known as he is for his novels. The author of 

[288] 



HETEROGENEOUS MAGIC OF MAUGHAM 

Lady Frederick, Mrs. Dot, and Caroline — the 
creator of Lord Porteous and Lady Kitty in The 
Circle — writes his plays because it amuses him to 
do so and because they supply him with an ex- 
cellent income. Here is a good story: 

It seems that Maugham had peddled his first 
play, Lady Frederick, to the offices of seventeen 
well-known London managers, until it came to 
rest in the Archives of the Court Theatre. The 
Court Theatre, standing in Sloane Square near 
the Tube station, is definitely outside the London 
theatre area, but as the scene of productions by 
the Stage Society, it is kept in the running. How- 
ever, it might conceivably be the last port of call 
for a worn manuscript. 

It so happened that Athole Stewart, the man- 
ager of the Court Theatre, found himself needing 
a play very badly during one season. The the- 
atre had to be kept open and there was nothing 
to keep it open with. From a dingv pile of play 
manuscripts he chose Lady Frederick. He had no 
hopes of its success — or so it is said — but the 
success materialised. At the anniversary of Lady 
Frederick in London, Maugham thought of ask- 
ing to dinner the seventeen managers who re- 
jected the play, but realising that no man enjoyed 
being reminded of a lost opportunity he decided 
to forgo the pleasure. 

The circumstances in which Caroline was writ- 
ten give an interesting reflex on Maugham as an 
artist. This delicious comedy was put on paper 

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WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

while Maugham was acting as British agent in 
Switzerland during the war. Some of its more 
amusing lines were written in some haste while 
a spy (of uncertain intentions toward Maugham) 
stood outside in the snow. 



vn 

Someone, probably the gifted Hector Mac- 
Quarrie, whom I fear I have guiltily been quoting 
in almost every sentence of this chapter, has said 
that Maugham writes "transcripts, not of life as 
a tolerable whole, but of phases which suit his 
arbitrary treatment." It is an enlightening com- 
ment. 

But Maugham himself is the keenest appraiser 
of his own intentions in his work, as when he 
spoke of the stories in his book, The Trembling 
of a Leaf, as not short stories, but "a study of the 
effect of the Islands of the Pacific on the white 
man." 

The man never stays still. When you think 
the time is ripe for him triumphally to tour Amer- 
ica — when The Moon and Sixpence has attracted 
the widest attention — he insists on going imme- 
diately to China. This may be because, though 
well set up, black-eyed, broad-framed and exces- 
sively handsome in evening clothes, he is rather 
diffident. 



[290] 



HETEROGENEOUS MAGIC OF MAUGHAM 

Books 
by W. Somerset Maugham 

Novels: 

LIZA OF LAMBETH 

THE MAKING OF A SAINT 

ORIENTATIONS 

THE HERO 

MRS. CRADDOCK 

THE MERRY-GO-ROUND 

THE LAND OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN 

THE BISHOP'S APRON 

THE EXPLORER 

THE MAGICIAN 

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 

THE MOON AND SIXPENCE 

THE TREMBLING OF A LEAF 

ON A CHINESE SCREEN 

Plays: 

SCHIFFBRUCHIG 
A MAN OF HONOUR 
LADY FREDERICK 
JACK STRAW- 
MRS. DOT 
THE EXPLORER 
PENELOPE 
SMITH 

THE TENTH MAN 
GRACE 
LOAVES AND FISHES 

[291] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

the land of promise 
caroline 
love in a cottage 
Cesar's wife 
home and beauty 
the unknown 
the circle 
east of suez 



Sources 
on W. Somerset Maugham 

Who's Who [In England]. 

Somerset Maugham in Tahiti: Hitherto unpub- 
lished article by Hector MacQuarrie. 
the bookman (London). 
Private information. 



[292] 



Chapter XVIII 
BOOKS WE LIVE BY 



nnWE Parallel New Testament is by Dr. 

A James Moffatt, whose New Translation 
of the New Testament has excited such wide ad- 
miration and praise. The Parallel New Testa- 
ment presents the Authorised Version and Pro- 
fessor Moffatt's translation in parallel columns, 
together with a brief introduction to the New 
Testament. 

I suppose there is no sense in my expending 
adjectives in praise of Dr. Moffatt's translation 
of the New Testament. I could do so very easily. 
But what I think would be more effective would 
be to ask you to take a copy of the Authorised 
Version and read in it some such passage as Luke, 
24th chapter, 13th verse, to the close of the chap- 
ter and then — and not before! — read the same 
account from Dr. Moffatt's New Translation, as 
follows : 

"That very day two of them were on their way 
to a village called Emmaus about seven miles 
from Jerusalem. They were conversing about all 

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WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

these events, and during their conversation and 
discussion Jesus himself approached and walked 
beside them, though they were prevented from 
recognising him. He said to them, 'What is all 
this you are debating on your walk"?' They 
stopped, looking downcast, and one of them, 
called Cleopas, answered him, 'Are you a lone 
stranger in Jerusalem, not to know what has been 
happening there'?' 'What is that?' he said to 
them. They replied, 'All about Jesus of Nazaret ! 
To God and all the people he was a prophet strong 
in action and utterance, but the high priests and 
our rulers delivered him up to be sentenced to 
death and crucified him. Our own hope was that 
he would be the redeemer of Israel ; but he is dead 
and that is three days ago ! Though some women 
of our number gave us a surprise; they were at 
the tomb early in the morning and could not find 
his body, but they came to tell us they had 
actually seen a vision of angels who declared he 
was alive. Some of our company did go to the 
tomb and found things exactly as the women had 
said, but they did not see him/ He said to them, 
'Oh, foolish men, with hearts so slow to believe, 
after all the prophets have declared! Had not 
the Christ to suffer thus and so enter his glory?' 
Then he began with Moses and all the prophets 
and interpreted to them the passages referring to 
himself throughout the scriptures. Now they ap- 
proached the village to which they were going. 
He pretended to be going further on, but they 

[294] 



BOOKS WE LIVE BY 

pressed him, saying 'Stay with us, for it is getting 
towards evening and the day has now declined/ 
So he went in to stay with them. And as he lay 
at the table with them he took the loaf, blessed it, 
broke it and handed it to them. Then their eyes 
were opened and they recognised him, but he van- 
ished from their sight. And they said to one an- 
other, 'Did not our hearts glow within us when 
he was talking to us on the road, opening up the 
scriptures for us 4 ?' So they got up and returned 
that very hour to Jerusalem, where they found 
the eleven and their friends all gathered, who 
told them that the Lord had really risen and that 
he had appeared to Simon. Then they related 
their own experience on the road and how they 
had recognised him when he broke the loaf. Just 
as they were speaking He stood among them [and 
said to them, 'Peace to you !'] . They were scared 
and terrified, imagining it was a ghost they saw; 
but he said to them, 'Why are you upset 4 ? Why 
do doubts invade your mind? Look at my hands 
and feet. It is I ! Feel me and see ; a ghost has 
not flesh and bones as you see I have.' [With 
these words he showed them his hands and feet. ] 
Even yet they could not believe it for sheer joy; 
they were lost in wonder. So he said to them, 
'Have you any food here?' And when they 
handed him a piece of broiled fish, he took and 
ate it in their presence. Then he said to them, 
'When I was still with you, this is what I told 
you, that whatever is written about me in the law 

[2953 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

of Moses and the prophets and the psalms must be 
fulfilled.' Then he opened their minds to under- 
stand the scriptures. 'Thus,' he said, f it is writ- 
ten that the Christ has to suffer and rise from the 
dead on the third day and that repentance and 
the remission of sins must be preached in his name 
to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. To 
this you must bear testimony. And I will send 
down on you what my Father has promised ; wait 
in the city till you are endued with power from 
on high.' He led them out as far as Bethany; 
then, lifting his hands, he blessed them. And as 
he blessed them, he parted from them [and was 
carried up to heaven]. They [worshipped him 
and] returned with great joy to Jerusalem, where 
they spent all their time within the temple, bless- 
ing God." 

I am particularly glad to say that Dr. Moffatt 
is at work now on a New Translation of the Old 
Testament. No man living is fitter for this tre- 
mendously important and tremendously difficult 
task than James Moffatt. Born in Glasgow in 
1870, Dr. Moffatt has been Professor of Church 
History there since 1915. Of his many pub- 
lished studies in Bible literature, I now speak 
only of The Approach to the New Testament, 
which he modestly describes as "a brief statement 
of the general situation created by historical criti- 
cism," aiming to "bring out the positive value of 
the New Testament literature for the world of 
today as a source of guidance in social reconstruc- 

[296] 



BOOKS WE LIVE BY 

tion, so that readers might be enabled to recover 
or retain a sense of its lasting significance for per- 
sonal faith and social ideals." 



11 

With Alfred Dwight Sheffield's Joining in 
Public Discussion was begun publication of a 
unique collection of books suitable alike for gen- 
eral reading and for use in trade union colleges. 
This is the Workers' Bookshelf Series. These 
books, in many instances, are being written by 
the chief authorities on their subjects — men who 
have dealt exhaustively with their specialties in 
two and three-volume treatises, and who now 
bring their great knowledge to a sharp focus and 
a simple, condensed statement in small but wholly 
authoritative new books. 

The work of preparing these little masterpieces 
has been undertaken by an editorial board chosen 
with the aid of the Workers' Education Bureau 
of America. The board consists of Charles A. 
Beard, Miss Fannia Cohn, H. W. L. Dana, John 
P. Frey, Arthur Gleason, Everitt Dean Martin, 
Spencer Miller, Jr., George W. Perkins and 
Robert Wolf. 

Trade union colleges now exist all over the 
United States, training armies of workers. The 
lack of suitable texts for use in these colleges has 
been a serious obstacle to the training they desire 
to give. 

[297] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

This obstacle the Workers' Bookshelf over- 
comes. The books that compose it will each be 
distinguished for (a) scholarship, (b) a scientific 
attitude toward facts, and (c) simplicity of style. 

Each volume is beginning as a class outline and 
will receive the benefit of every suggestion and 
criticism through its gradual growth into the 
written book. 

Each book will be brief. Its references will 
help the reader to more detailed sources of in- 
formation. 

By binding the books in paper as well as in 
cloth, the volumes will be brought within the 
reach of all. 

The Workers' Bookshelf will contain no vol- 
umes on vocational guidance, nor any books which 
give "short cuts" to moneymaking success. 

The series will not be limited to any set num- 
ber of volumes nor to any programme of subjects. 
Art, literature and the natural sciences, as well 
as the social sciences, will be dealt with. New 
titles will be added as the demand for treatment 
of a topic becomes apparent. 

The first use of these books will be as texts to 
educate workers; the intermediate use of the 
books will be as the nucleus of workingmen's 
libraries, collective and personal, and the last use 
of the Workers' Bookshelf will be to instruct and 
delight all readers of serious books everywhere. 

In our modern industrial society, knowledge — 
things to know — increases much more rapidly than 

[298] 



BOOKS WE LIVE BY 

our understanding. The worker finds it increas- 
ingly difficult to comprehend the world he has 
done most to create. The education of the worker 
consists in showing him in a simple fashion the 
interrelations of that world and all its aspects 
as they are turned toward him. On the education 
of the worker depends the future of industrialism, 
and, indeed, of all human society. 

The author of Joining in Public Discussion is 
professor of rhetoric in Wellesley College and 
instructor in the Boston Trade Union College. 
His book "is a study of effective speechmaking, 
for members of labour unions, conferences, forums 
and other discussion groups." The first section 
is upon "Qualifying Oneself to Contribute" to 
any discussion and the second section is upon 
"Making the Discussion Group Co-operate." A 
brief introduction explains "What Discussion 
Aims to Do." 

The following titles of the Workers' Bookshelf 
are in preparation : 

Trade Union Policy, by Dr. Leo Wolman, 
lecturer at the New School for Social Research 
and instructor in the Workers' University of 
the International Ladies' Garment Workers' 
Union. 

Women and the Labor Movement, by Alice 
Henry, editor of Life and Labour, director of 
the Training School for Women Workers in 
Industry. 

Labor and Health, by Dr. Emery Hayhurst of 

[299] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

Ohio State University, author of "Industrial 
Health Hazards and Occupational Diseases." 

Social Forces in Literature, by Dr. H. W. L. 
Dana, formerly teacher of comparative literature 
at Columbia, now instructor at Boston Trade 
Union College. 

The Creative Spirit in Industry, by Robert B. 
Wolf, vice-president of the American Society of 
Mechanical Engineers, member of the Federated 
American Engineering Society. 

Co-operative Movement, by Dr. James B. 
Warbasse, president of the Co-operative League 
of America and instructor at the Workers' Uni- 
versity. 

iii 

Side by side in Esme Wingfield-Stratford's 
Facing Reality are chapters with these titles: 
"Thinking in a Passion" and "Mental Inertia." 
Those chapter titles seem to me to signify the 
chief dangers confronting the world today — per- 
haps confronting the world in any day — and the 
main reasons why we do not face reality as we 
should. I regard Facing Reality as an important 
book and I am not alone in so regarding it. What 
do we mean by reality? The answer is explicit in 
a sentence in Mr. Wingfield-Stratford's introduc- 
tion, where he says : 

"But if we are to get right with reality or, in 
the time-honoured evangelical phrase, with God, 
it must be by a ruthless determination to get the 

[3oo] 



BOOKS WE LIVE BY 

truth in religion, even if we have to break down 
Church walls to attain it." 

Then the author proceeds to assess the social 
and ethical conditions which threaten the world 
with spiritual bankruptcy. As he says: 

"Whether Germany can be fleeced of a yearly 
contribution, of doubtful advantage to the re- 
ceiver, for forty years or sixty, what particular 
economic laws decree that Poles should be gov- 
erned by Germans or vice-versa, whose honour or 
profit demands the possession of the town of 
Fiume or the district of Tetschen or the Island of 
Yap, why all the horses and men of the Entente 
are necessary to compel the Port of Dantzig to 
become a free city, what particular delicacy of 
national honour requires that the impartial dis- 
tribution of colonies should be interpreted as 
meaning the appropriation of the whole of them 
by the victors — all these things are held by uni- 
versal consent to be more urgent and interesting 
than the desperate necessity that confronts us 
all." 

And yet, for some, reality is not immanent in 
the affairs of this world but only in those of the 
next. Among the men who, with Sir Oliver 
Lodge, have gone most deeply and earnestly into 
the whole subject we call "spiritualism," Sir 
Arthur Conan Doyle is now the most widely 
known as he has always been the most persuasive. 
The overflowing crowds which came out to hear 
him lecture on psychic evidences during his recent 

[301] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

tour of America testify to the unquenchable hope 
of mankind in a life beyond ours. Sir Arthur 
has written three books on this subject closest to 
his heart. The New Revelation and The Vital 
Message are both short books presenting the gen- 
eral case for spiritualists; The Wanderings of a 
Spiritualist, the result of a lecture tour in India 
and Australia, commingles incidents of travel 
with discussions of psychic phenomena. I believe 
Sir Arthur has in preparation a more extensive 
work, probably to be published under the title 
Spiritualism and Rationalism. 

In recent years there has been something like a 
consensus honouring Havelock Ellis as the ablest 
living authority on the subject of sex; or perhaps 
I should say that Mr. Ellis and his wife are the 
most competent writers on this difficult and deli- 
cate subject, so beset by fraudulent theories and 
so much written upon by charlatans. Let me 
recommend to you Havelock Ellis's slender book, 
hit tie Essays of Love and Virtue, for a sane, at- 
tractive and, at the same time, authoritative 
handling of sex problems. 



IV 

Little Essays of Love and Virtue, however, is, 
after all, only upon a special subject, even though 
of extreme importance. There are others among 
the books we live by which I must speak of here. 
It is tiresome to point out that we are all self- 
[302] 



BOOKS WE LIVE BY 

made men or women, consciously or unconsciously, 
in the sense that if we gain control of our habits, 
to a very large extent we acquire control of our 
lives. If, in Some Things That Matter Lord 
Riddell did no more than point out this old truth, 
his book would not be worth mentioning. What 
makes it so well worth mentioning, so much more 
deserving of discussion than any I can enter upon 
here, is the fact that Lord Riddell tells how to 
observe, how to read, and how to think — or per- 
haps I should say how to develop the habit of 
thought. I think, so able are his instructions, so 
pointed and so susceptible of carrying out by any 
reader, that his book would carry due weight even 
if it were anonymous. But for those who want 
assurance that the author of Some Things That 
Matter is himself somebody who matters, let me 
point out that he is one of the largest newspaper 
proprietors in the world, a man whose grasp on 
aifairs has twice placed him at the head of news 
service for two continents — once at the Peace 
Conference in Paris and afterward at the Dis- 
armament Conference in Washington. 

Some Things That Matter is the best book of 
its kind since Arnold Bennett's How to Live on 
Twenty-four Hours a Day, a little book of trench- 
ant advice to which it is a pleasure again to call 
attention. Of all Mr. Bennett's pocket philoso- 
phies — Self and Self-Management, Friendship 
and Happiness, The Human Machine, Mental 
Efficiency and Married Life — How to Live on 

[303] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

Twenty-four Hours a Day is easily of the greatest 
service to the greatest number of people. 



I read Dr. George L. Perin' s Self-Healing 
Simplified in manuscript and enthusiastically 
recommended its acceptance for publication. Dr. 
Perin was the founder of the Franklin Square 
House for Girls in Boston, a home-hotel from 
which 70,000 girls, most of whom Dr. Perin knew 
personally, have gone forth all over these United 
States. His death at the end of 1921 was felt 
by thousands of people as a personal loss. He 
left, in the manuscript of this book, the best and 
simplest volume I know of on what is generally 
called autosuggestion. And I have examined a 
great many books of the sort. 

Discarding all extreme claims, Dr. Perin says 
in the first place that the mind can heal; that it 
may not be able to heal alone ; that obviously no 
form of healing can be successful without a 
favourable mental state; that the favourable 
mental state can usually be acquired by the sin- 
cere and conscious effort of the sufferer. This 
effort should take the form of certain affirmations. 

It is at this point that the ordinary book on 
autosuggestion breaks down — so far as any prac- 
tical usefulness is concerned. Either it degen- 
erates into a purely technical treatise or it be- 
comes lost in a mysticism which is to the average 

[304] 



BOOKS WE LIVE BY 

reader incomprehensible. What has long been 
needed has been a book like Self -Healing Simpli- 
fied, readable by the ordinary person who has his 
own troubles to contend with and who knows not 
how to contend with them; who is willing to be- 
lieve that he can do his part by cheerful resolu- 
tions and faith toward getting well, but who has 
no idea what to do. 

Dr. Perin tells him what to do, what to say, 
what to think and how to order his daily life. 
Actually Dr. Perin does much more than this ; his 
own confidence and personal success inspire con- 
fidence and give the impulsion toward one's own 
personal success. However, excellent as the book 
might be, it would be worthless if it were not 
clearly and simply expressed. It is. I remember 
no book of the kind so direct and so lucid. 



VI 

It is a pleasure to feel that his new book, Poets 
and Puritans, introduces T. R. Glover to a wider 
audience. The author of The Pilgrim, Essays on 
Religion, The Nature and Purpose of a Christian 
Society, Jesus in the "Experience of Man and The 
Jesus of History is a scholar and somewhat of a 
recluse whom one finds after much groping about 
dim halls at Cambridge. A highly individual 
personality! It is this personality, though, that 
makes the fascination of Poets and Pilgrims — a 
volume of studies in which the subjects are 

[305] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

Spenser, Milton, Evelyn, Bunyan, Boswell, 
Crabbe, Wordsworth and Carlyle. Mr. Glover 
notes at the foot of the table of contents: "An 
acute young critic, who saw some of the proofs, 
has asked me, with a hint of irony, whether 
Evelyn and Boswell were Puritans or Poets. Any 
reader who has a conscience about the matter must 
omit these essays." There you have the flavour of 
the man! It is expressed further in the short 
preface of Poets and Puritans: — 

"Wandering among books and enjoying them, 
I find in a certain sense that, the more I enjoy 
them, the harder becomes the task of criticism, 
the less sure one's faith in critical canons, and the 
fewer the canons themselves. Of one thing, 
though, I grow more and more sure — that the real 
business of the critic is to find out what is right 
with a great work of art — book, song, statue, or 
picture — not what is wrong. Plenty of things 
may be wrong, but it is what is right that really 
counts. If the critic's work is to be worth while, 
it is the great element in the thing that he has to 
seek and to find — to learn what it is that makes 
it live and gives it its appeal, so that, as Mon- 
taigne said about Plutarch, men 'cannot do with- 
out' it; why it is that in a world, where every- 
thing that can be 'scrapped' is 'scrapped,' is 
thrown aside and forgotten, this thing, this book 
or picture, refuses to be ignored, but captures and 
charms men generations after its maker has passed 
away. 

[306] 



BOOKS WE LIVE BY 

"With such a quest a man must not be in a 
hurry, and he does best to linger in company with 
the great men whose work he wishes to under- 
stand, and to postpone criticism to intimacy. This 
book comes in the end to be a record of personal 
acquaintances and of enjoyment. But one is 
never done with knowing the greatest men or the 
greatest works of art — they carry you on and on, 
and at the last you feel you are only beginning. 
That is my experience. I would not say that I 
know these men, of whom I have written, thor- 
oughly — a man of sense would hardly say that, 
but I can say that I have enjoyed my work, and 
that, whatever other people may find it, to me it 
has been a delight and an illumination." 

Another welcome book is E. V. Lucas's Giving 
and Receiving ', a new volume of essays. Since 
the appearance of Roving East and Roving West, 
Mr. Lucas has been looking back at America from 
London with its fogs and (yes!) its sunshine. The 
audience for his new book will include not only 
those readers he has had for such volumes in the 
past but all those personal friends that he made 
in a visit that took him from California to the 
Battery. 



[307] 



Chapter XIX 

ROBERT W. CHAMBERS AND THE WHOLE 
TRUTH 



ONCE a man came to Robert W. Chambers 
and said words to this effect : 

"You had a great gift as a literary artist and 
you spoiled it. For some reason or other, I don't 
know what, but I suppose there was more money 
in the other thing, you wrote down to a big audi- 
ence. Don't you think, yourself, that your earlier 
work — those stories of Paris and those novels of 
the American revolution — had something that you 
have sacrificed in your novels of our modern 
day?' 

Mr. Chambers listened politely and attentively. 
When the man had finished, Chambers said to 
him words to this effect : 

"You are mistaken. I have heard such talk. I 
am not to blame if some people entertain a false 
impression. I have sacrificed nothing, neither for 
money nor popularity nor anything else. 

"Sir, I am a story-teller. I have no other gift. 
Those who imagine that they have seen in my 

[308] 



ROBERT W. CHAMBERS 

earlier work some quality of literary distinction 
or some unrealised possibility as an artist missing 
from my later work, are wrong. 

"They have read into those stories their own 
satisfaction in them and their first delight. I was 
new, then. In their pleasure, such as it was, they 
imagined the arrival of someone whom they styled 
a great literary artist. They imagined it all; it 
was not I. 

"A story-teller I began, and a story-teller I re- 
main. I do pride myself on being a good story- 
teller; if the verdict were overwhelmingly against 
me as a good story-teller that would cast me down. 
I have no reason to believe that the verdict is 
against me. 

"And that is the ground I myself have stood 
upon. I am not responsible for the delusion of 
those who put me on some other, unearthly pin- 
nacle, only to realise, as the years went by, that I 
was not there at all. But they can find me now 
where they first found me — where I rather suspect 
they found me first with unalloyed delight." 

This does not pretend to be an actual transcrip- 
tion of the conversation between Mr. Chambers 
and his visitor. I asked Mr. Chambers recently 
if he recalled this interview. He said at this date 
he did not distinctly recollect it and he added : 

"Probably I said what is true, that I write the 
sort of stories which at the moment it amuses me 
to write; I trust to luck that it may also amuse 
the public. 

[309] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

"If a writer makes a hit with a story the public 
wants him to continue that sort of story. It does 
not like to follow the moods of a writer from gay 
to frivolous, from serious to grave, but I have 
always liked to change, to experiment — just as I 
used to like to change my medium in painting, 
aquarelle, oil, charcoal, wash, etc. 

"Unless I had a good time writing I'd do some- 
thing else. I suit myself first of all in choice 
of subject and treatment, and leave the rest to 
the gods." 

As a human creature Chambers is strikingly 
versatile. It must always be remembered that 
he started life as a painter. There is a story that 
Charles Dana Gibson and Robert W. Chambers 
sent their first offerings to Life at the same time. 
Mr. Chambers sent a picture and Mr. Gibson sent 
a bit of writing. Mr. Gibson's offering was ac- 
cepted and Robert W. Chambers received a 
rejection slip. 

Not only was he a painter but Chambers has 
preserved his interest in art, and is a welcome 
visitor in the offices of curators and directors of 
museums because he is one of the few who can 
talk intelligently about paintings. 

He knows enough about Chinese and Japanese 
antiques to enable him to detect forgeries. He 
knows more about armour than anyone, perhaps, 
except the man who made the marvellous collec- 
tion of mediseval armour for the Metropolitan 
Museum of Art, New York. 
[3io] 



ROBERT W. CHAMBERS 

One of his varieties of knowledge, observable 
by any reader of his novels, is lepidoptery — the 
science of butterflies. He collects butterflies with 
exceeding ardour. But then, he is a good deal of 
an outdoor man. He knows horses and books; 
he has been known to hunt ; he has been seen with 
a fishing rod in his hand. 

His knowledge of out-of-the-way places in dif- 
ferent parts of the world — Paris, Petrograd — is 
not usual. 

Will you believe me if I add that he is some- 
thing of an expert on rare rugs? 

Of course, I am, to some extent, taking Rupert 
Hughes's word for these accomplishments; and 
yet they are visible in the written work of Robert 
W. Chambers where, as a rule, they appear with- 
out extrusion. 

ii 

And here is the newest Robert W. Cham- 
bers novel, Ens. Mr. Chambers's The Flaming 
Jewel, a melodrama of the maddest character, 
was published last spring. Eris is really a story 
of the movie world, and reaches its most definite 
conclusion, possibly, in a passage where the hero 
says to Eris Odell : 

"Whether they are financing a picture, direct- 
ing it, releasing it, exhibiting it, or acting in it, 
these vermin are likely to do it to death. Your 
profession is crawling with them. It needs de- 
lousing." 

[311] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

But I am not really anxious, in this chapter, to 
discuss the justice or injustice of the view of 
motion pictures thus forcibly presented. I have 
read Ens with an interest sharpened by the fact 
that its hero is a writer. I seem to see in what is 
said about and by Barry Annan expressions of 
Mr. Chambers's own attitude of more than casual 
importance. 

Barry Annan is obsessed with the stupidity of 
the American mass and more particularly with 
the grossness (as he sees it) of New York City. 

"Annan went on with his breakfast leisurely. 
As he ate he read over his pencilled manuscript 
and corrected it between bites of muffin and 
bacon. 

"It was laid out on the lines of those modern 
short stories which had proven so popular and 
which had lifted Barry Annan out of the uniform 
ranks of the unidentified and given him an indi- 
vidual and approving audience for whatever he 
chose to offer them. 

"Already there had been lively competition 
among periodical publishers for the work of this 
newcomer. 

"His first volume of short stories was now in 
preparation. Repetition had stencilled his name 
and his photograph upon the public cerebrum. 
Success had not yet enraged the less successful in 
the literary puddle. The frogs chanted politely 
in praise of their own comrade. 

"The maiden, too, who sips the literary soup 

[312] 



ROBERT W. CHAMBERS 

that seeps through the pages of periodical publi- 
cations, was already requesting his autograph. 
Clipping agencies began to pursue him ; film com- 
panies wasted his time with glittering offers that 
never materialised. Annan was on the way to 
premature fame and fortune. And to the after- 
math that follows for all who win too easily and 
too soon. 

"There is a King Stork for all puddles. His 
law is the law of compensations. Dame Nature 
executes it — alike on species that swarm and on 
individuals that ripen too quickly. 

"Annan wrote very fast. There was about 
thirty-five hundred words in the story of Eris. 
He finished it by halfpast ten. 

"Re-reading it, he realised it had all the con- 
centrated brilliancy of an epigram. Whether or 
not it would hold water did not bother him. The 
story of Eris was Barry Annan at his easiest and 
most persuasive. There was the characteristic 
and ungodly skill in it, the subtle partnership with 
a mindless public that seduces to mental specula- 
tion; the reassuring caress as reward for intellec- 
tual penetration; that inborn cleverness that 
makes the reader see, applaud, or pity him or her- 
self in the sympathetic role of a plaything of 
Chance and Fate. 

"And always Barry Annan left the victim of 
his tact and technique agreeably trapped, suffer- 
ing gratefully, excited by self-approval to the 
verge of sentimental tears. 

[313] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

" 'That'll make 'em ruffle their plumage and 
gulp down a sob or two/ he reflected, his tongue 
in his cheek, a little intoxicated, as usual, by his 
own infernal facility. 

"He lit a cigarette, shuffled his manuscript, 
numbered the pages, and stuffed them into his 
pocket. The damned thing was done." 

And again: — 

"Considering her, now, a half-smile touching 
his lips, it occurred to him that here, in her, he 
saw his audience in the flesh. This was what his 
written words did to his readers. His skill held 
their attention; his persuasive technique, unsus- 
pected, led them where he guided. His cleverness 
meddled with their intellectual emotions. The 
more primitive felt it physically, too. 

"When he dismissed them at the bottom of the 
last page they went away about their myriad 
vocations. But his brand was on their hearts. 
They were his, these countless listeners whom he 
had never seen — never would see. 

"He checked his agreeable re very. This 
wouldn't do. He was becoming smug. Reaction 
brought the inevitable note of alarm. Suppose 
his audience tired of him. Suppose he lost them. 
Chastened, he realised what his audience meant 
to him — these thousands of unknown people 
whose minds he titivated, whose reason he juggled 
with and whose heart-strings he yanked, his 
tongue in his cheek." 

And this further on: — 

[314] 



ROBERT W. CHAMBERS 

"He went into his room but did not light the 
lamp. For a long while he sat by the open win- 
dow looking out into the darkness of Governor's 
Place. 

"It probably was nothing he saw out there 
that brought to his lips a slight recurrent smile. 

"The bad habit of working late at night was 
growing on this young man. It is a picturesque 
habit, and one of the most imbecile, because sound 
work is done only with a normal mind. 

"He made himself some coffee. A rush of 
genius to the head followed stimulation. He had 
a grand time, revelling with pen and pad and 
littering the floor with inked sheets unnumbered 
and still wet. His was a messy genius. His plot- 
logic held by the grace of God and a hair-line. 
Even the Leaning Tower of Pisa can be plumbed; 
and the lead dangled inside Achilles's tendon 
when one held the string to the medulla of 
Annan's stories." 

Our young man is undergoing a variety of in- 
teresting changes : 

"Partly experimental, partly sympathetically 
responsive, always tenderly curious, this young 
man drifted gratefully through the inevitable 
episodes to which all young men are heir. 

"And something in him always transmuted into 
ultimate friendship the sentimental chaos, where 
comedy and tragedy clashed at the crisis. 

"The result was professional knowledge. 
Which, however, he had employed rather ruth- 

[315] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

lessly in his work. For he resolutely cut out all 
that had been agreeable to the generations which 
had thriven on the various phases of virtue and 
its rewards. Beauty he replaced with ugliness; 
dreary squalor was the setting for crippled body 
and deformed mind. The heavy twilight of 
Scandinavian insanity touched his pages where 
sombre shapes born out of Jewish Russia moved 
like anachronisms through the unpolluted sun- 
shine of the New World. 

"His were essays on the enormous meanness 
of mankind — meaner conditions, mean minds, 
mean aspirations, and a little mean horizon to 
encompass all. 

"Out of his theme, patiently, deftly, ingen- 
iously he extracted every atom of that beauty, 
sanity, inspired imagination which makes the im- 
perfect more perfect, creates better than the ma- 
terials permit, forces real life actually to assume 
and be what the passionate desire for sanity and 
beauty demands." 

There comes a time when Eris Odell says to 
Barry Annan: — 

" T could neither understand nor play such a 
character as the woman in your last book. . . . 
Nor could I ever believe in her. . . . Nor in the 
ugliness of her world — the world you write about, 
nor in the dreary, hopeless, malformed, starving 
minds you analyse. . . . My God, Mr. Annan — 
are there no wholesome brains in the world you 
write about? " 

[3i6] 



ROBERT W. CHAMBERS 

I think these citations interesting. I do not feel 
especially competent to produce from them infer- 
ences regarding Mr. Chambers's own attitude 
toward his work. 

Eris will be published early in 1923, following 
Mr. Chambers's The Talkers. 



111 

Mr. Chambers was born in Brooklyn, May 26, 
1865, the son of William Chambers and Carolyn 
(Bough ton) Chambers. Walter Bough ton Cham- 
bers, the architect, is his brother. Robert William 
Chambers was a student in the Julien Academy in 
Paris from 1886 to 1893. He married, on July 
12, 1898, Elsa Vaughn Moler. He first exhibited 
in the Paris Salon in 1889; he was an illustrator 
for Life, Truth, Vogue and other magazines. His 
first book, In the Quarter, was published in 1893; 
and when, in the same year, a collection of stories 
of Paris called The King in Yellow made its ap- 
pearance, Robert W. Chambers became a name 
of literary importance. 

Curiously enough, among the things persist- 
ently remembered about Mr. Chambers to this day 
is a particular poem in a book of rollicking verse 
called With the Band, which he published in 
1895. This cherished — by very many people 
scattered here and there — poem had to do with 
Irishmen parading. One stanza will identify it. 

r.317] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

"Ses Corporal Madden to Private McFadden: 
'Bedad yer a bad 'un ! 
Now turn out yer toes ! 
Yer belt is unhookit, 
Yer cap is on crookit, 
Yer may not be drunk, 
But, be jabers, ye look it! 
Wan-two ! 
Wan-two ! 
Ye monkey-faced divil, I'll jolly ye through! 
Wan-two ! 
Time ! Mark ! 
Ye march like the aigle in Cintheral Park !' " 

In the course of writing many books, Chambers 
has been responsible for one or two shows. He 
wrote for Ada Rehan, The Witch of Elian* 
gowan, 2l drama produced at Daly's Theatre. 
His Iole was the basis of a delightful musical 
comedy produced in New York in 1913. He is 
a member of the National Institute of Arts and 
Letters. 

Books 
by Robert W. Chambers 

IN THE QUARTER 

THE KING IN YELLOW 

THE RED REPUBLIC 

THE KING AND A FEW DUKES 

THE MAKER OF MOONS 

WITH THE BAND 

THE MYSTERY OF CHOICE 

[318] 



ROBERT W. CHAMBERS 

LORRAINE 

ASHES OF EMPIRE 

THE HAUNTS OF MEN 

THE CAMBRIC MASK 

OUTSIDERS 

THE CONSPIRATORS 

CARDIGAN 

THE MAID-AT-ARMS 

OUTDOOR-LAND 

THE MAIDS OF PARADISE 

ORCHARD-LAND 

FOREST LAND 

IOLE 

THE FIGHTING CHANCE 

MOUNTAIN LAND 

THE TRACER OF LOST PERSONS 

THE TREE OF HEAVEN 

THE FIRING LINE 

SOME LADIES IN HASTE 

THE DANGER MARK 

THE SPECIAL MESSENGER 

HIDE AND SEEK IN FORESTLAND 

THE GREEN MOUSE 

AILSA PAIGE 

BLUE-BIRD WEATHER 

JAPONETTE 

THE STREETS OF ASCALON 

ADVENTURES OF A MODEST MAN 

THE BUSINESS OF LIFE 

THE COMMON LAW 

THE GAY REBELLION 

[319] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

WHO GOES THERE? 

THE HIDDEN CHILDREN 

ATHALIE 

POLICE ! ! ! 

THE GIRL PHILIPPA 

THE BARBARIANS 

THE RESTLESS SEX 

THE MOONLIT WAY 

IN SECRET 

THE CRIMSON TIDE 

THE SLAYER OF SOULS 

THE LITTLE RED FOOT 

THE FLAMING JEWEL 

THE TALKERS 

ERIS 

Sources 
on Robert W. Chambers 

Robert W. Chambers: Article by Rupert Hughes 
in the cosmopolitan magazine for June, 
1918. 

The Men Who Make Our Novels, by George Gor- 
don. MOFFAT, YARD & COMPANY. 

Who's Who in America. 
Private Information. 



[320] 



Chapter XX 
UNigUITIES 



EACH of these five is a book which, either from 
its subject, its authorship, or its handling, 
is sui generis. I call such books "uniquities" ; it 
sounds a little less trite than saying they are 
unique. I think I will let someone else speak 
of these books. I will look to see, and will let 
you see, what others have said about my 
uniquities. 

ii 

First we have Our Navy at War by Josephus 
Daniels. W. B. M'Cormick, formerly of the edi- 
torial staff of the Army and Navy Journal, re- 
viewing this book for the New York Herald 
(28 May 1922) said: 

"Josephus Daniels always was an optimist 
about navy affairs while he was Secretary of the 
Navy from 1913 to 1921, and now that he has 
told what the navy did during the world war he 
demonstrates in his narrative that he is a good 
sport. For in spite of the many and bitter attacks 

[321] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

that were made on him in that troubled time he 
does not make a single reference to any of them, 
nor does he wreak any such revenge as he might 
have done through this medium. In this respect 
it may be said that truly does he live up to the 
description of his character set down in the pages 
of Rear Admiral Bradley A. Fiske's autobiog- 
raphy, namely, that 'Secretary Daniels impressed 
me as being a Christian gentleman.' 

"In its general outlines and in many of its de- 
tails there is little in Mr. Daniels's story that has 
not been told before in volumes devoted to single 
phases of the United States Navy's war opera- 
tions. For example, his chapter on the extraor- 
dinary task of laying the great mine fields, known 
as the North Sea barrage, from Norway to the 
Orkneys, is much more fully described in the ac- 
count written by Captain Reginald R. Belknap; 
the story of 'Sending Sims to Europe' is also more 
extensively presented in that officer's book, The 
Victory at Sea, and the same qualification can be 
applied to the chapter on the fighting of the ma- 
rines in Belleau Wood and elsewhere, and the 
work of our destroyers and submarines in Euro- 
pean waters. 

"But Mr. Daniels's history has one great merit 
that these other books lack. This is that it tells 
in its 374 pages the complete story of the work of 
the navy in the world war, giving so many details 
and so much precise information about officers and 
their commands, ships of all classes and just what 

[322] 



UNIQUITIES 

they did, the valuable contributions made to the 
winning of the war by civilians, that it makes a 
special place for itself, a very special place, in any 
library or shelf devoted to war books." 



in 

Leslie Haden Guest, a surgeon of wide experi- 
ence and secretary of the British Labour Delega- 
tion to Soviet Russia, is the author of The Strug- 
gle for Power in Europe (1917-21), "an outline 
economic and political survey of the Central 
States and Russia," of which E. J. C. said in the 
Boston Evening Transcript (4 March 1922) : 

"The author writes from personal observation 
in Russia and discloses much of the life of the day 
in that country which heretofore has remained un- 
disclosed to the world. He has met and inter- 
viewed Lenine and Trotsky themselves, shows us 
the individuality of these great Bolshevist leaders 
and tells us much of the life of the people and 
of the social conditions and tendencies in that 
distressful country. 

"Next he crosses to Poland, another undiscov- 
ered country, and shows us the new Poland, its 
aims and its struggles to emerge from a state al- 
most of anarchy into one of a rational democ- 
racy. Very little do we of this country know of 
the new nation of Tcheko-Slovakia, but Dr. 
Guest has travelled through it also and shows us 
the two sections, one cultured, the other more 

[323] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

backward, but both working together to form a 
modern democratic nation. 

"The distressful condition of Austria and the 
Austrians now suffering for the sins of the Haps- 
burgs, is next shown forth. Vienna, once the 
capital of a vast empire and the seat of a great 
imperial court, was suddenly reduced to the level 
of the capital of a small agricultural, inland state, 
a condition productive of great suffering. The 
conditions here are shown to differ much from 
those in other countries, for the dismemberment 
of Austria was not brought about by the act of 
the Allies, but of their own people. The causes 
of the suffering are fully explained, as are also 
the causes of similar conditions in Hungary, in 
Roumania, in Bulgaria and in other countries af- 
fected by the economic and political upheavals 
following the war. That democracy in Europe 
will finally triumph Dr. Guest feels certain and 
he gives lucid reasons for the faith that is in him. 
He gives a broadly intelligent analysis of the 
entire situation and finds that the essential con- 
ditions of success of a democracy are peace, edu- 
cation and adequate nutrition. But he shows that 
a great problem exists which must be worked out ; 
and he shows how it must be worked out. Dr. 
Guest is not alone a thinker, but an observer; not 
a theorist, but a man of practical understanding, 
who has studied a problem at first hand and shows 
it forth simply but comprehensively and with an 
eye single to the needs of humanity." 

[324] 



UNIQUITIES 

iv 

Of Herman Melville: Mariner and Mystic, by 
Raymond M. Weaver, Carl Van Vechten, writ- 
ing in the Literary Review of the New York 
Evening Post (31 December 1921), said: 

"No biography of Melville, no important per- 
sonal memorandum of the man, was published 
during his lifetime. It is only now, thirty years 
after his death and one hundred and two years 
after his birth, that Raymond M. Weaver's 
Herman Melville: Mariner and Mystic has ap- 
peared. 

"Under the circumstances, Mr. Weaver may be 
said to have done his work well. The weakness 
of the book is due to the conditions controlling its 
creation. Personal records in any great number 
do not exist. There are, to be sure, Melville's 
letters to Hawthorne, published by Julian Haw- 
thorne, in his Nathaniel Hawthorne and His 
Wife. There are a few references to Melville in 
the diary of Mrs. Hawthorne and in her letters to 
her mother. There remain the short account 
given by J. E. A. Smith, a man with no kind of 
mental approach to his hero, a few casual mem- 
ories of Richard Henry Stoddard, whose further 
testimony would have been invaluable had he 
been inclined to be more loquacious, and a few 
more by Dr. Titus Munson Coan and Arthur Sted- 
man; but both these men, perhaps the nearest 
to Melville in his later years, were agreed that he 

[325] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

ceased to be an artist when he deserted the pre- 
scribed field of Typee and Omoo> and they har- 
assed his last days in their efforts to make him 
perceive this, much as if an admirer of Verdi's 
early manner had attempted to persuade the com- 
poser that work on 'Aida' and 'Otello' was a waste 
of time that might much better be occupied in 
creating another 'Trovatore.' In desperation, 
Melville refused to be lured into conversation 
about the South Seas, and whenever the subject 
was broached he took refuge in quoting Plato. 
No very competent witnesses, therefore, these. 
Aside from these sources, long open to an investi- 
gator, Mr. Weaver has had the assistance of Mr. 
Melville's granddaughter, who was not quite ten 
years old when Melville died, but who has in her 
possession Mrs. Melville's commonplace book, 
Melville's diary of two European excursions, and 
a few letters. 

"Generally, however, especially for the most 
important periods and the most thrilling events in 
Melville's life, Mr. Weaver has been compelled 
to depend upon the books the man wrote. 

"The book, on the whole, is worthy of its sub- 
ject. It is written with warmth, subtlety, and 
considerable humour. Smiles and thoughts lie hid- 
den within many of its pregnant lines. One of 
the biographer's very strangest suggestions is 
never made concrete at all, so far as I can discern. 
The figure of the literary discoverer of the South 
Seas emerges perhaps a bit vaguely, his head in 

[326] 



UNIQUITIES 

the clouds, but there is no reason to believe that 
Melville's head was anywhere else when he was 
alive. Hawthorne is at last described pretty ac- 
curately and not too flatteringly. The Scarlet 
Letter was published in 1850; Moby Dick in 
1851. It is one of the eternal ironies that the one 
should be world-famous while the other is still 
struggling for even national recognition. There 
are long passages, well-studied and well-written, 
dealing with the whaling industry and the early 
missionaries, which will be extremely helpful to 
any one who wants a bibliographical background 
for the ocean and South Sea books. Melville's 
London notebook is published for the first time 
and there is a nearly complete reprint of his first 
known published paper 'Fragments From a Writ- 
ing Desk,' which appeared in two numbers of 
The Democratic Press and Lansingburgh Adver- 
tiser in 1839 (not 1849, as the bibliography er- 
roneously gives it). Mr. Weaver is probably 
right in ascribing Melville's retirement from liter- 
ature to poverty (it was a fortunate year that 
brought him as much as $100 in royalties and his 
account at Harper's was usually overdrawn), to 
complete disillusionment, which made it impos- 
sible for him to say more than he had already 
said, even on the subject of disillusionment, and 
to ill-health. 

"It is a pleasure, moreover, to find that Mr. 
Weaver has a warm appreciation of Mardi and 
Pierre, books which have either been neglected or 

[327] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

fiercely condemned since they first appeared, books 
which are no longer available save in early edi- 
tions. They are not equal to Moby Dick, but they 
are infinitely more important and more interesting 
than Typee and Omoo, on which the chief fame 
of the man rests. It is to his credit that Mr. 
Weaver has perceived this, but a great deal more 
remains to be said on the subject. Mardi, Moby 
Dick, and Pierre, as a matter of fact, form a kind 
of tragic trinity : Mardi is a tragedy of the intel- 
lect; Moby Dick, a tragedy of the spirit, and 
Pierre a tragedy of the flesh. Mardi is a tragedy 
of heaven, Moby Dick a tragedy of hell, and 
Pierre a tragedy of the world we live in. 

"Considering the difficulties in his path, it may 
be said that Mr. Weaver has solved his problem 
successfully. The faults of the book, to a large 
extent, as I have already pointed out, are not the 
faults of the author, but the faults of conditions 
circumscribing his work. At any rate, it can no 
longer be said that no biography exists of the 
most brilliant figure in the history of our letters, 
the author of a book which far surpasses every 
other work created by an American from The Scar- 
let Letter to The Golden Bowl. For Moby Dick 
stands with the great classics of all times, with 
the tragedies of the Greeks, with Don Quixote, 
with Dante's Inferno and with Shakespeare's 
Hamlet." 



[328] 



UNIQUITIES 



A man who is certainly an authority on naval 
subjects tells me that The Grand Fleet by Vis- 
count Jellicoe of Scapa is the masterpiece of the 
great war. He does not mean, of course, in a 
literary sense; but he does most emphatically 
mean in every other sense. I quote from the re- 
view by P. L. J., of Admiral Jellicoe' s second 
book, The Crisis of the Naval War. The review 
appeared in that valuable Annapolis publication, 
the Proceedings of the United States Naval Insti- 
tute for April, 1921 : 

"This interesting book is the complement of his 
first volume, The Grand Fleet, 1914-16. Admiral 
Jellicoe, the one man who was best situated to 
know, now draws aside the curtains and reveals 
to us the efforts made by the Admiralty to over- 
come the threat made by the German submarine 
campaign. The account not only deals with the 
origin ashore of the defence and offence against 
submarines, but follows to sea the measures 
adopted where their application and results are 
shown. 

"The first chapter deals at length with the 
changes made in the admiralty that the organisa- 
tion might be logical and smooth working to avoid 
conflict of authority, to have no necessary service 
neglected, to provide the necessary corps of inves- 
tigators of new devices, and above all to free the 
first Sea Lord and his assistants of a mass of de- 

[329] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

tail that their efforts might be concentrated on 
the larger questions. 

"The appendices are of value and interesting 
because they show the organisation at different 
periods and emphasise the fact that the Naval 
Staff at the end of the war was the result of trial 
and error, natural growth, and at least one radical 
change adopted during the war. 

"Chapters II and III deal with the Submarine 
Campaign in 1917 and the measures adopted to 
win success. The gradual naval control of all 
merchant shipping with its attendant difficulties 
is clearly shown. The tremendous labour involved 
in putting into operation new measures; the un- 
remitting search for and development of new 
antisubmarine devices is revealed, and above all 
the length of time necessary to put into operation 
any new device, and this when time is the most 
precious element, is pointed out. 

"That a campaign against the enemy must be 
waged with every means at hand ; that new weap- 
ons must be continually sought ; that no 'cure-air 
by which the enemy may be defeated without 
fighting can be expected; that during war is the 
poorest time to provide the material which should 
be provided during peace, the Admiral shows in a 
manner not to be gainsaid. 

"Chapters IV and V deal with the testing, intro- 
duction, and gradual growth of the convoy sys- 
tem. It is shown how the introduction of this 
system was delayed by lack of vessels to perform 

[330] 



UNIQUITIES 

escort duty and why when finally adopted it was 
so successful because it was not only defensive but 
offensive in that it meant a fight for a submarine 
to attack a vessel under convoy. 

"Chapter VI is devoted to the entry of the 
United States. The accurate estimate of our 
naval strength by both the enemy and the allies, 
and our inability upon the declaration of war to 
lend any great assistance are shown — and this at 
the most critical period for the Allies — a period 
when the German submarine campaign was at its 
height, when the tonnage lost monthly by the 
Allies was far in excess of what can be replaced— 
when the destruction of merchant shipping if con- 
tinued at the then present rate would in a few 
months mean the defeat of the Allies." 



VI 

I will give you what Admiral Caspar F. Good- 
rich said in the Weekly Review (30 April 1921 ; 
The Weekly Review has since been combined 
with The Independent) regarding A History of 
Sea Power, by William O. Stevens and Allan 
Westcott : 

"Two professors at the Naval Academy, the 
one a historian, the other a close student of Ma- 
han, have written a noteworthy volume in their 
History of Sea Power, published in excellent 
form, generously supplied with maps, illustra- 
tions, and index. The title suggests Mahan's 

[330 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

classic which is largely followed in plan and treat- 
ment. It will be remembered that his writings 
covered in detail only the years from 1660 to 
1815. While not neglecting this period, this 
book is particularly valuable for events not within 
its self-assigned limits. Practically it is a his- 
tory of naval warfare from ancient times to the 
present day. Each chapter deals briefly, but ably, 
with one epoch and closes with an appropriate 
bibliography for those who care to go more fully 
into the question; a commendable feature. The 
last chapter, 'Conclusions,' deserves especial at- 
tention. Naturally, considerable space is de- 
voted to the story and analysis of Jellicoe's 
fight. Few will disagree with the verdict of the 
authors : 

" 'It is no reflection on the personal courage of 
the Commander-in-Chief that he should be moved 
by the consideration of saving his ships. The ex- 
istence of the Grand Fleet was, of course, essential 
to the Allied cause, and there was a heavy weight 
of responsibility hanging on its use. But again 
it is a matter of naval doctrine. Did the British 
fleet exist merely to maintain a numerical prepon- 
derance over its enemy or to crush that enemy — 
whatever the cost? If the Battle of Jutland re- 
ceives the stamp of approval as the best that 
could have been done, then the British or the 
American officer of the future will know that he 
is expected primarily to "play safe." But he will 
never tread the path of Blake, Hawke, or Nelson, 

[332] 



UNIQUITIES 

the men who made the traditions of the Service 
and forged the anchors of the British Empire.' 

"One factor in the success of the antisubmarine 
campaign is not mentioned, important as it proved 
to be. This was the policy adopted by the Allies 
of not giving out the news that any U-boat was 
captured or otherwise accounted for. Confronted 
with this appalling veil of mystery the morale of 
the German submarine crews became seriously af- 
fected; volunteering for this service gradually 
ceased; arbitrary detail grew necessary; greatly 
lessened efficiency resulted. 

"The authors are to be congratulated on pro- 
ducing a volume which should be in the hands of 
all naval officers of the coming generation; on the 
shelves of all who take interest in the development 
of history; and of statesmen upon whom may 
eventually rest the responsibility of heeding or 
not heeding the teachings of Manan as here sym- 
pathetically and cleverly brought up to date." 



[333] 



Chapter XXI 

THE CONFESSIONS OF A WELL-MEANING 
YOUNG MAN, STEPHEN McKENNA 



IN a sense, all of Stephen McKenna's writing 
has been a confession. More than any other 
novelist now actively at work, this young man 
bases fiction on biographical and autobiographical 
material; and when he sits down deliberately to 
write reminiscences, such as While I Remember^ 
the result is merely that, in addition to confessing 
himself, he confesses others. 

He has probably had more opportunity of 
knowing the social and political life of London 
from the inside than most novelists of his time. 
In While I Remember he gives his recollections, 
while his memory is still fresh enough to be vivid, 
of a generation that closed, for literary if not for 
political purposes, with the Peace Conference. 
There is a power of wit and mordant humour and 
a sufficiency of descriptive power and insight into 
human character in all his work. 

While I Remember is actually a gallery of pic- 
tures taken from the life and executed with the 

[334] 




STEPHEN MOKENNA 



[335] 



STEPHEN McKENNA 

technique of youth by a man still young — pictures 
of public school and university life, of social Lon- 
don from the death of King Edward to the Armis- 
tice, of domestic and foreign politics of the period, 
of the public services of Great Britain at home 
and abroad. Though all these are within the 
circle of Mr. McKenna's narrative, literary Lon- 
don — the London that is more talked about than 
seen — is the core of his story. 



n 

Mr. McKenna's latest novel, The Confessions 
of a Well-Meaning Woman, is a series of mono- 
logues addressed by one Lady Ann Spenworth to 
"a friend of proved discretion." I quote from the 
London Times of April 6, 1922: "In the course 
of them Lady Ann Spenworth reveals to us the 
difficulties besetting a lady of rank. She is com- 
pelled to live in a house in Mount street — for how 
could she ask 'The Princess' to visit her in Bays- 
water*? — and her income of a few thousands, 
hardly supplemented by her husband's director- 
ships, is depleted by the disbursements needed to 
keep the name of her only son out of the news- 
papers while she is obtaining for him the wife and 
the salary suited to his requirements and capac- 
ities. Mr. Stephen McKenna provides us with 
the same kind of exasperating entertainment that 
we get at games from watching a skilful and un- 
scrupulous veteran. Her deftness in taking a step 

[337] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

or two forward in the centre and so putting the 
fast wing off side ; her air of sporting acquiescence 
touched with astonishment when a penalty is 
given against her for obstruction; her resolution 
in jumping in to hit a young bowler off his length; 
the trouble she has with her shoe-lace when her 
opponent is nervous; the suddenness with which 
every now and again her usually deliberate second 
service will follow her first; the slight pucker in 
her eyebrows when she picks up a hand full of 
spades; the pluck with which she throws herself 
on the ball when there is nothing else for it; her 
dignified bonhomie in the dressing room ! We all 
know Lady Ann and her tricks, but nothing can 
be proved against her and she continues to play 
for the best clubs. 

"In this story Lady Ann is playing the social 
game, and it is a tribute to the skill of Mr. Mc- 
Kenna that at the end we hope that the Princess 
will be sufficiently curious about her new 'frame 
and setting' to continue her visits. . . . We have 
used the word 'story' because Lady Ann reports 
her machinations while they are in progress and 
we are a little nervous about the issue. Her main 
service, however, lies in the pictures she draws of 
her own highly placed relatives and of a number 
of people who at house parties and elsewhere may 
help ladies of title to make both ends meet. Chief 
among them is her son Will, who even as seen 
through her partial eyes, appears a very dishonest, 
paltry boy. Her blind devotion to him humanises 

[338] 



STEPHEN McKENNA 

both her shrewdness and her selfishness. It is for 
his sake that she separates her niece from the fine 
young soldier she is in love with and that she al- 
most succeeds in providing the King's Proctor 
with the materials for an intervention that would 
secure to him the estates and title of his fox-hunt- 
ing uncle. There is always a plain tale to put her 
down and always the friend of proved discretion 
is left with the impression that the tale is the in- 
vention of malice; at least we suppose she must 
be, for Lady Ann is allowed by people to whom 
she has done one injury to remain in a position 
to do them another. The difficult medium em- 
ployed by Mr. McKenna entitles him, however, to 
count on the co-operation of the reader; and it is 
to be accorded the more readily that to it we owe 
the felicity of having her own account of the 
steps she took to prevent an attractive but expen- 
sive widow from running away with her husband, 
and of the party which she gave, according to plan, 
to the Princess and, not according to plan, to other 
guests let loose on her by her scapegrace brother- 
in-law." 

iii 

Stephen McKenna, the author of Soma, not to 
be confused with Stephen McKenna, the transla- 
tor of Poltinus, belongs to the Protestant branch 
of that royal Catholic sept which has had its home 
in the County Monagham since the dawn of Irish 
history. Some members, even, of this branch 

[339] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

have reverted to the old faith since the date 
of Stephen McKenna's birth in the year 1888 in 
London. 

He was a scholar of Westminster and an exhi- 
bitioner of Christ Church, Oxford. After he had 
taken his degree, his father, Leopold McKenna, 
an elder brother of the Right Honourable Regi- 
nald McKenna, K. C, the last Liberal Chancellor 
of the British Exchequer, made it possible for him 
to travel desultorily and to try his luck in the 
great literary adventure. 

On the outbreak of the war, as his health, which 
is delicate to the point of frailness, debarred him 
from entering the army, Stephen McKenna first 
volunteered for service at his old school, and, af- 
ter a year, joined the staff of the War Trade In- 
telligence Department, where he did valuable war 
work for three and a half years. He represented 
his department on the Right Honourable A. J. 
Balfour's mission in 1917, to the United States, 
where he enjoyed himself thoroughly and made 
himself very popular; and he did not sever his con- 
nection with the government service until Febru- 
ary, 1919, four months after the conclusion of the 
armistice. 

Stephen McKenna's first three novels — The 
Reluctant Lover, Sheila Intervenes and The Sixth 
Sense — were written and published before their 
author was 27 years of age ! But Soma, the story 
that made him widely known, was written entirely 
during the period of his activities on the staff of 

[34o] 



STEPHEN McKENNA 

Westminster School and at the War Trade Intel- 
ligence Department. The book won the public 
favour more quickly than perhaps any other novel 
that has appeared in our time. 

The success of Sonia was largely due to its de- 
scription in a facile, popular and yet eminently 
chaste and polished style, of the social and politi- 
cal situation in England for a half generation be- 
fore and during the early stages of the war. This 
description Stephen McKenna was peculiarly 
well-equipped to produce, not only as the near 
relative of a prominent cabinet minister, but also 
as an assiduous frequenter of the leading Liberal 
centre, the Reform Club, on the committee of 
which he had sat, despite his youthful years, since 
1915. The political interest, indeed, is revealed 
in the subtitle, Between Two Worlds, which was 
originally intended for the actual title. 

McKenna' s next book, Ninety-Six Hours* 
Leave, appealed to the reader's gayer moods and 
Midas and Son, with its tragic history of an Anglo- 
American multimillionaire, to the reader in seri- 
ous temper. 

In spite of certain blemishes due to Mr. Mc- 
Kenna's unfamiliarity with American life, I 
should say that Midas and Son is probably his 
ablest work so far. I think it surpasses even 
Sonia. Mr. McKenna returned to Sonia in his 
novel, Sonia Married. His work after that was a 
trilogy called The Sensationalists, three brilliant 
studies of modern London in the form of succes- 

[341] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

sive novels called Lady Lilith, The Education of 
Eric Lane and The Secret Victory. 



IV 

Writing from 11, Stone Buildings, Lincoln's 
Inn, London, in 1920, Mr. McKenna had this to 
say about his trilogy: 

(i Lady Lilith is the first volume of a trilogy 
called The Sensationalists, three books giving the 
history for a few years before the war, during and 
immediately after the war, of a group of sensa- 
tion-mongers, emotion-hunters or whatever you 
like to call them, whose principle and practice it 
was to startle the world by the extravagance of 
their behaviour, speech, dress and thought and, 
in the other sense of the word, sensationalism, to 
live on the excitement of new experiences. Such 
people have always existed and always will exist, 
receiving perhaps undue attention from the world 
that they set out to astonish. You, I am sure, 
have them in America, as we have them here, and 
in the luxurious and idle years before the war they 
had incomparable scope for their search for nov- 
elty and their quest for emotion. Some of the 
characters in Lady Lilith have already been seen 
hovering in the background of Sonia, Midas and 
Son and Sonia Married, though the principal 
characters in Lady Lilith have not before been 
painted at full length or in great detail ; and these 

[342] 



STEPHEN McKENNA 

principal characters will be found in all three 
books of the trilogy. 

11 Lady Lilith^ of course, takes its title from the 
Talmud, according to which Lilith was Adam's 
first wife; and as mankind did not taste of the 
Tree of Knowledge or of death until Eve came to 
trouble the Garden of Eden, Lilith belongs to a 
time in which there was neither death nor knowl- 
edge of good or evil in the world. She is immor- 
tal, unaging and non-moral ; her name is given by 
Valentine Arden, the young novelist who appears 
in Sonia and elsewhere, to Lady Barbara Neave, 
the principal character in Lady Lilith and one 
of the principal characters in the two succeeding 
books." 



In person, Stephen McKenna is tall, with a 
slender figure, Irish blue eyes, fair hair, regular 
features and a Dante profile. He has an engaging 
and very courteous address, a sympathetic man- 
ner, a ready but always urbane wit and great 
conversational charm. He possesses the rare ac- 
complishment of "talking like a book." His in- 
timates are legion; and, apart from these, he 
knows everyone who "counts" in London society. 
He is known never to lose his temper; and it is 
doubtful whether he has ever had cause to lose it. 

His one recreation is the Opera ; and during the 
London season his delightful chambers in Lin- 

[343] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

coin's Inn are the almost nightly scene of parties 
collected then and there from the opera house. 

vi 

A sample of The Confessions of a Well-Mean- 
ing Woman: 

"Lady Ann {to a friend of proved discretion) : 
You have toiled all the way here again *? Do you 
know, I feel I am only beginning to find out who 
my true friends are? I am much, much better. 
. . . On Friday I am to be allowed on to the sofa 
and by the end of next week Dr. Richardson prom- 
ises to let me go back to Mount Street. Of course 
I should have liked the operation to take place 
there — it is one's frame and setting, but, truly 
honestly, Arthur and I have not been in a position 
to have any painting or papering done for so long. 
. . . The surgeon insisted on a nursing home. 
Apparatus and so on and so forth. . . . Quite 
between ourselves I fancy that they make a very 
good thing out of these homes ; but I am so thank- 
ful to be well again that I would put up with al- 
most any imposition. . . . 

"Everything went off too wonderfully. Per- 
haps you have seen my brother Brackenbury? Or 
Ruth*? Ah, I am sorry; I should have been vastly 
entertained to hear what they were saying, what 
they dared say. Ruth did indeed offer to pay the 
expenses of the operation — the belated prick of 
conscience ! — and it was on the tip of my tongue 
to say we are not yet dependent on her spasmodic 

[344] 



STEPHEN McKENNA 

charity. Also, that I can keep my lips closed 
about Brackenbury without expecting a — tip'? 
But they know I can't afford to refuse £500. . . . 
If they, if everybody would only leave one alone ! 
Spied on, whispered about. . . . 

"The papers made such an absurd stir ! If you 
are known by name as occupying any little niche, 
the world waits gaping below. I suppose I ought 
to be flattered, but for days there were callers, let- 
ters, telephone-messages. Like Royalty in ex- 
tremis. . . . And I never pretended that the oper- 
ation was in any sense critical. . . . 

"Do you know, beyond saying that, I would 
much rather not talk about it? This very modern 
frankness. . . . Not you, of course! But when 
a man like my brother-in-law Spenworth strides 
in here a few hours before the anaesthetic is ad- 
ministered and says 'What is the matter with 
you? Much ado about nothing, I call it.' . . . 
That from Arthur's brother to Arthur's wife, 
when, for all he knew, he might never see her alive 
again. ... I prefer just to say that everything 
went off most satisfactorily and that I hope now 
to be better than I have been for years. ..." 

Books 
by Stephen McKenna 

THE RELUCTANT LOVER 
SHEILA INTERVENES 
THE SIXTH SENSE 

[345] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

sonia: between two worlds 

ninety-six hours' leave 

midas and son 

sonia married 

lady lilith 

the education of eric lane 

the secret victory 

while i remember 

the confessions of a well-meaning woman 



Sources 
on Stephen McKenna 



Who's Who [In England] 
Private Information. 



[346] 



Chapter XXII 
POETS AND PLAYWRIGHTS 

i 

1HAVE to tell about a number of poets and, 
regarding poets, I agree with a very clever 
woman I know who declares that poetry is the 
most personal of the arts and who further says 
that it is manifestly inadequate to talk about a 
poet's work without giving a sample of his poetry. 
So, generally, I shall quote one of the shorter 
poems or a passage from a longer poem. 

John Dos Passos, known for Three Soldiers 
and for Rosinante to the Road Again, will be still 
more variously known to those who read his book 
of verse, A Pushcart at the Curb. This book bears 
a relation to Rosinante, the contents grouping 
themselves under these general headings: 

Winter in Castile 

Nights by Bassano 

Translations from the Spanish of Antonio Machado 

Vagones de Tercera 

Quai de la Tournelle 

Of Foreign Travel 

Phases of the Moon 

[347] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

I will select for quotation the sixth or final 
poem dedicated to A. K. McC. from the section 
entitled "Quai de la Toumelle," 

This is a garden 

where through the russet mist of clustered trees 

and strewn November leaves, 

they crunch with vainglorious heels 

of ancient vermilion 

the dry dead of spent summer's greens, 

and stalk with mincing sceptic steps, 

and sound of snuffboxes snapping 

to the capping of an epigram, 

in fluffy attar-scented wigs . . . 

the exquisite Augustans. 

Christopher Morley is too well-known as a poet 
to require any explicit account in this place. I 
shall remind you of the pleasure of reading him 
by quoting the "Song For a Little House" from 
his book, The Rocking Horse, and also a short 
verse from his Translations from the Chinese. 

I'm glad our house is a little house, 

Not too tall nor too wide: 
I'm glad the hovering butterflies 

Feel free to come inside. 

Our little house is a friendly house, 

It is not shy or vain; 
It gossips with the talking trees, 

And makes friends with the rain. 

And quick leaves cast a shimmer of green, 

Against our whited walls, 
And in the phlox, the courteous bees, 

Are paying duty calls. 

[348] 



POETS AND PLAYWRIGHTS 

But there is a different temper — or, if you like, 
tempering — to the verse in Translations from the 
Chinese. I quote "A National Frailty": 

The American people 

Were put into the world 

To assist foreign lecturers. 

When I visited them 

They filled crowded halls 

To hear me tell them Great Truths 

Which they might as well have read 

In their own prophet Thoreau. 

They paid me, for this, 

Three hundred dollars a night, 

And ten of their mandarins 

Invited me to visit at Newport. 

My agent told me 

If I would wear Chinese costume on the platform 

It would be five hundred. 



In speaking of the late Joyce Kilmer, the temp- 
tation is inescapable to quote his "Trees"; after 
all, it is his best known and best loved poem — in 
certain moments it is his best poem ! But instead, 
I will desert his volume, Trees and Other Poems, 
and from his other book, Main Street and Other 
Poems, I will quote the first two stanzas of 
Kilmer's "Houses" — a poem written for his 
wife: 

When you shall die and to the sky 

Serenely, delicately go, 
Saint Peter, when he sees you there, 

Will clash his keys and say: 

[349] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

"Now talk to her, Sir Christopher ! 

And hurry, Michelangelo! 
She wants to play at building, 

And you've got to help her play!" 

Every architect will help erect 

A palace on a lawn of cloud, 
With rainbow beams and a sunset roof, 

And a level star-tiled floor; 
And at your will you may use the skill 

Of this gay angelic crowd, 
When a house is made you will throw it down, 

And they'll build you twenty more. 

Mrs. Kilmer is the author of two volumes of 
verse which have sold rather more than John 
Masefield usually sells — at least, until the pub- 
lication of Reynard the Fox. Candles That 
Burn created her audience and Vigils has been 
that audience's renewed delight. From Vigils I 
take the poem "The Touch of Tears." In it 
"Michael" is, of course, her own son: 

Michael walks in autumn leaves, 

Rustling leaves and fading grasses* 
And his little music-box 

Tinkles faintly as he passes. 
It's a gay and jaunty tune 

If the hands that play were clever! 
Michael plays it like a dirge, 

Moaning on and on forever. 

While his happy eyes grow big, 
Big and innocent and soulful, 

Wistful, halting little notes 
Rise, unutterably doleful, 

[350] 



POETS AND PLAYWRIGHTS 

Telling of all childish griefs — 

Baffled babies sob forsaken, 
Birds fly off and bubbles burst, 

Kittens sleep and will not waken. 

Michael, it's the touch of tears. 

Though you sing for very gladness, 
Others will not see your mirth; 

They will mourn your fancied sadness. 
Though you laugh at them in scorn, 

Show your happy heart for token, 
Michael, you'll protest in vain — 

They will swear your heart is broken! 

I think I have said elsewhere that J. C. Squire 
prefers his serious poems to those parodies of 
which he is such an admitted master. It seems 
only decent to defer, in this place, to the author's 
own feeling in the matter. Mr. Squire is the 
author of The Birds and Other Poems and Poems: 
Second Series. My present choice is the begin- 
ning and the close of the poem, "Harlequin' ' — 
which is in both books: 

Moonlit woodland, veils of green, 
Caves of empty dark between; 
Veils of green from rounded arms 
Drooping, that the moonlight charms: 
Tranced the trees, grass beneath 
Silent. . . . 

Like a stealthy breath, 
Mask and wand and silver skin 
Sudden enters Harlequin. 

Hist ! Hist ! Watch him go, 
Leaping limb and pointing toe, 
Slender arms that float and flow, 

[351] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

Curving wand above, below; 
Flying, gliding, changing feet; 
Onset merging in retreat. 

Not a shadow of sound there is 
But his motion's gentle hiss, 
Till one fluent arm and hand 
Suddenly circles, and the wand 
Taps a bough far overhead, 
"Crack," and then all noise is dead. 
For he halts, and for a space 
Stands erect with upward face, 
Taut and tense to the white 
Message of the Moon's light. 

He was listening; he was there; 
Flash! he went. To the air 
He a waiting ear had bent, 
Silent; but before he went 
Something somewhere else to seek, 
He moved his lips as though to speak. 

And we wait, and in vain, 
For he will not come again. 
Earth, grass, wood, and air, 
As we stare, and we stare, 
Which that fierce life did hold, 
Tired, dim, void, cold. 

Milton Raison is a young writer, known espe- 
cially to readers of The Bookman, whose verse has 
appeared in various magazines. A Russian, Mil- 
ton Raison went to sea as a boy — he is scarcely 
more than a boy now. His first book of verse, 
Spindrift, carries a preface by William McFee. 
I quote: 

[35 2 1 



POETS AND PLAYWRIGHTS 

"There is a Latin sharpness of mentality mani- 
fested in these clearly, sardonically etched por- 
traits of a ship's crew. The whimsical humour 
revealed in final lines is a portent, in the present 
writer's opinion, of a talent which will probably 
come to maturity in a very different field. Indeed 
it may be, though it is too early to dogmatise, 
that these poems are but the early efflorescence of 
a gift for vigorous prose narrative. 

"Mr. Milton Raison has settled for himself, 
with engaging promptitude, that a seafaring 
career provides the inspiration he craves. The in- 
fluence of Masefield is strong upon him, and some 
of his verses are plainly derivative. As already 
hinted, it is too early to say definitely how this 
plan will succeed. In his diary, kept while on a 
voyage to South America, a document remarkable 
for its descriptive power and a certain crude and 
virginal candour, one may discover an embryo 
novelist struggling with the inevitable limitations 
of youth. But in his simple and naive poems, 
whether they give us some bizarre and catastro- 
phic picture of seamen, or depict the charming 
emotions of a sensitive adolescence, there is a 
passion for experiment and humility of intellect 
which promises well enough for a young man in 
his teens." 

I find it particularly difficult to choose a poem 
for citation from this book. Perhaps I shall do 
as well as I can, with only space to quote one 
poem, if I give you "Vision" : 

[353] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

Have I forgotten beauty, and the pang 

Of sheer delight in perfect visioning? 

Have I forgotten how the spirit sang 

When shattered breakers sprayed their ocean-tang 

To ease the blows with which the great cliffs rang"? 

Have I forgotten how the fond stars fling 

Their naked children to the faery ring 

Of some dark pool, and watch them play and sing 

In silent silver chords I too could hear? 

Or smile to see a starlet shake with fear 

Whenever winds disturbed the lake's repose, 

Or when in mocking mood they form in rows, 

And stare up at their parents — so sedate — 

Then break up laughing 'neath a ripple's weight? 



It seems as if, The First Person Singular hav- 
ing been published, more people now know Wil- 
liam Rose Benet as a novelist than as a poet. I 
cannot help feeling that to be something of a pity. 
I am not going to quote one of Mr. Benet' s poems 
— indeed all his best work is in quite long and 
semi-narrative verse — but I will give you what 
Don Marquis was inspired to write after reading 
Benet' s Moons of Grandeur. On looking at it 
again, I see that Mr. Marquis has quoted eight 
lines, so you shall have your taste of William 
Rose Benet, the poet, after all ! 

"Some day, just to please ourself, we intend 
to make a compilation of poems that we love best ; 
the ones that we turn to again and again. There 
will be in the volume the six odes of Keats, Shel- 
ley's 'Adonais' ; Wordsworth's 'Intimations of Im- 
mortality'; Milton's 'L' Allegro' and Tl Pense- 

[354] 



POETS AND PLAYWRIGHTS 

roso' ; William Rose Benet' s 'Man Possessed' and 
very little else. 

"We don't 'defend' these poems ... no doubt 
they are all of them quite indefensible, in the light 
of certain special poetic revelations of the last 
few years . . . and we have no particular the- 
ories about them; we merely yield ourself to them, 
and they transport us ; we are careless of reason in 
the matter, for they cast a spell upon us. We do 
not mean to say that we are in the category with 
the person who says: 'I don't know anything 
about art, but I know what I like' — On the con- 
trary, we know exactly why we like these things, 
although we don't intend to take the trouble to 
tell you now. 

"William Rose Benet has published another 
book of poems, Moons of Grandeur. Here is a 
stanza picked up at random — it happens to be the 
opening stanza of 'Gaspara Stampa' — which 
shows the lyric quality of the verse : 

"Like flame, like wine, across the still lagoon, 

The colours of the sunset stream. 
Spectral in heaven as climbs the frail veiled moon 

So climbs my dream. 
Out of the heart's eternal torture fire 

No eastern phoenix risen — 
Only the naked soul, spent with desire, 

Bursts its prison. 

"Was Benet ever in Italy*? No matter . . . 
he has Italy in him, in his heart and brain. Italy 
and Egypt and every other country that was ever 

[355] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

warmed by the sun of beauty and shone on by the 
stars of romance. For the poems in this book are 
woven of the stuff of sheer romance. There is 
nothing else in the world as depressing as a ro- 
mantic poem tnat doesn't 'get there.' And to us, 
at least, there is nothing as thrilling as the authen- 
tic voice of romance, the genuine utterance of the 
soul that walks in communion with beauty. 
Moons of Grandeur is a ringing bell and a glim- 
mering tapestry and a draught of sparkling wine. 

"A certain rich intricacy of pattern distin- 
guishes the physical body of Benet's art; when 
he chooses he can use words as if they were the 
jewelled particles of a mosaic; familiar words, 
with his handling, become 'something rich and 
strange/ Of the spiritual content of his poems, 
we can say nothing adequate, because there is not 
much that can be said of spirit; either it is there 
and you feel it, and it works upon you, or it is 
not there. There are very few people writing 
verse today who have the power to charm us and 
enchant us and carry us away with them as Benet 
can. He has found the horse with wings." 

The Bookman Anthology of Verse (1922), 
edited by John Farrar, editor of The Bookman, is 
an altogether extraordinary anthology to be made 
up from the poets contributing to a single maga- 
zine in eighteen consecutive months. Among those 
who are represented are: Franklin P. Adams, 
Karle Wilson Baker, Maxwell Bodenheim, Hilda 
Conkling, John Dos Passos, Zona Gale, D. H. 

[356] 



POETS AND PLAYWRIGHTS 

Lawrence, Amy Lowell, David Morton, Edwin 
Arlington Robinson, Carl Sandburg, Siegfried 
Sassoon, Sara Teasdale, Louis and Jean Starr 
Untermeyer, and Elinor Wylie. 

Mr. Farrar has written short introductions to 
the example (or examples) of the work of each 
poet. In his general preface he says: 

"Where most anthologies of poetry are col- 
lected for the purpose of giving pleasure by means 
of the verses themselves, I have tried here to give 
you something of the joy to be found in securing 
manuscripts, in attempting to understand current 
poetry by a broadening of taste to match broad- 
ening literary tendencies; and, perhaps most im- 
portant of all, to present you to the poets them- 
selves as I know them by actual meeting or cor- 
respondence." 

I will choose what Mr. Farrar says about Hilda 
Conkling, prefacing her poem "Lonely Song"; 
and then I will quote the poem : 

"A shy, but normal little girl, twelve years old 
now, nine when her first volume of verses ap- 
peared, Hilda Conkling is not so much the infant 
prodigy as a clear proof that the child mind, be- 
fore the precious spark is destroyed, possesses both 
vision and the ability to express it in natural 
and beautiful rhythm. Grace Hazard Conkling, 
herself a poet, is Hilda's mother. They live at 
Northampton, Massachusetts, in the academic 
atmosphere of Smith College where those who 
know the little girl say that she enjoys sliding 

[357] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

down a cellar stairway quite as much as she does 
talking of elves and gnomes. She was born in 
New York State, so that she is distinctly of the 
East. The rhythms which she uses to express her 
ideas are the result both of her own moods, which 
are often crystal-clear in their delicate imagery, 
and of the fact that from time to time, when she 
was first able to listen, her mother read aloud to 
her. In fact, her first poems were made before 
she, herself, could write them down. The specu- 
lation as to what she will do when she grows to 
womanhood is a common one. Is it important*? 
A childhood filled with beauty is something to 
have achieved." 

Bend low, blue sky, 

Touch my forehead; 

You look cool . . . bend down . . . 

Flow about me in your blueness and coolness, 

Be thistledown, be flowers, 

Be all the songs I have not yet sung. 

Laugh at me, sky! 

Put a cap of cloud on my head . . . 

Blow it off with your blue winds ; 

Give me a feeling of your laughter 

Beyond cloud and wind! 

I need to have you laugh at me 

As though you liked me a little. 

This has been, as I meant it to be, a wholly 
serious chapter ; but at the end I find I cannot stop 
without speaking of Keith Preston. No one who 

[358] 



POETS AND PLAYWRIGHTS 

reads the Chicago Daily News fails to know Keith 
Preston's delightful humour and "needle-tipped 
satire." And his book, Splinters, contains all 
sorts of good things of which I can give you, alas, 
only some inadequate (because solitary) sample. 
Yet, anyway, here is his "Ode to Common Sense" : 

Spirit or demon, Common Sense ! 
Seen seldom by us mortals dense, 
Come, sprite, inform, inhabit me 
And teach me art and poetry. 

Teach me to chuckle, sly as you, 
At gods that now I truckle to, 
To doubt the New Republic's bent, 
And jeer each bookish Supplement. 

Now, like a thief, you come and flit, 
You call so seldom, Mother Wit! 
Remember? Once when you stood by 
I found a Dreiser novel dry. 

One day when I was reading hard — 
What? Amy Lowell, godlike bard! 
You peeped and then at what you saw 
Grave one Gargantuan guffaw. 

Spirit or demon, coarse or rude, 
(Sometimes I think you must be stewed) 
Brute that you are, I love your powers, 
But, — drop in after office hours ! 

Yes, Common Sense, be mine, I ask, 
But still respect my critic's task; 
Molest me not when I'm employed 
With psychics, sex, vers libre, or Freud. 

[359] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

ii 

The matter of playwrights is much more diffi- 
cult than that of poets ! A play cannot, as a rule, 
be satisfactorily quoted from. In the case of a 
play which is to be staged there are terrible ob- 
jections (on the part of the producer) to any ex- 
cerpts at all appearing in advance. The publica- 
tion of the text of a play is hedged about by all 
manner of difficulties, copyrights, warnings and 
solemn notifications. As I write, it is expected 
that A. H. Woods, the producer of plays, will 
stage at the Times Square Theatre, New York, 
probably in September, 1922, the new play by 
W. Somerset Maugham, East of Suez. Pauline 
Frederick is expected to assume the principal role. 
Mr. Maugham's play will be published when it 
has been produced, or, if the theatre plans surfer 
one of those changes to which all theatres are sub- 
ject, will be published anyhow! Shall we say 
that the setting is Chinese, and that the characters 
are Europeans, and that Mr. Maugham has again 
shown his peculiar skill in the delineation of the 
white man in contact with an alien civilisation? 
We shall say so. And — never mind ! A sure pro- 
duction of the play for the Fireside Theatre is 
hereby guaranteed. The Fireside Theatre, blessed 
institution, has certain merits. The actors are al- 
ways ideal and the performance always begins on 
time, as a letter to the New York Times has 
pointed out. 

[360] 



POETS AND PLAYWRIGHTS 

Arnold Bennett has written a lot of plays; The 
Love Match is merely the latest of them. If I 
cannot very well quote a scene from The Love 
Match, — on the grounds of length and possible 
unintelligibility apart from the rest of the drama 
— I can give you, I think, an idea of the wit of 
the dialogue: 

Russ (with calm and disdainful resentment). 
You're angry with me now. 

Nina (hurt). Indeed I'm not. Why should I 
be angry ? Do you suppose I mind who sends you 
flowers? 

Russ. No, I don't. That's not the reason. 
You're angry with me because you came in here 
tonight, after saying positively you wouldn't 
come, and I didn't happen to be waiting for you. 

Nina. Hugh, you're ridiculous. 

Russ. Of course I am. That's not the reason. 
You took me against my will to that footling 
hospital ball last night, and I only got three 
hours' sleep instead of six, and you're angry with 
me because I yawned after you kissed me. 

Nina. You're too utterly absurd ! 

Russ. Of course I am. That's not the reason, 
either. The real reason is (firmly) you're angry 
with me because you clean forgot it was my 
birthday today. That's why you're angry with 
me. 

Nina. Well, I think you might have reminded 
me. . . . 

Nina. I like sitting on the carpet. (She re- 

[361] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

dines at his feet.) I wonder why women nowa- 
days are so fond of the floor. 

Russ. Because they're oriental, of course. 

Nina. But I'm not oriental, Hughie ! (Look- 
ing at him with loving passion.) Am I? 

Russ. That's the Eastern question. 

Nina. But you like it, don't you'? 

Russ. Every man has a private longing to live 
in the East. 

Nina. But not harems and things? 

Russ. Well — within reason. . . . 

Nina. What do you think of me? I'm al- 
ways dying to know, and I'm never sure. 

Russ. What do you think of me? 

Nina. I think you're magnificent and terrible 
and ruthless. 

Russ (with amicable sincerity). Oh, no, I'm 
not. But you are. 

Nina. How? When? When was I ruthless 
last? 

Russ. You're always ruthless in your appe- 
tite for life. You want to taste everything, en- 
joy all the sensations there are. This evening you 
like intensely to sit very quiet on the floor; but 
last night you were mad about dancing and eat- 
ing and drinking. You couldn't be still. To- 
morrow night it'll be something else. There's no 
end to what you want, and what you want tre- 
mendously, and what you've jolly well got to 
have. You aren't a woman. You're a hundred 
women. 

[362] 



POETS AND PLAYWRIGHTS 

Nina. Oh! Hughie. How well you under- 
stand ! 

Russ. Yes, don't I ? 

Nina {tenderly). Do I make you very un- 
happy? Hughie, you mustn't tell me I make you 
unhappy. I couldn't bear it. 

Russ. Then I won't. 

Nina. But do I*? 

Russ. Let's say you cause a certain amount of 
disturbance sometimes. 

Nina. But you like me to be as I am, don't 
you? 

Russ. Yes. 

Nina. You wouldn't have me altered? 

Russ. Can't alter a climate. 

Nina. You don't know how much I want to 
be perfect for you. 

Russ. You know my ruthless rule, "The best 
is good enough; chuck everything else into the 
street." Have I ever, on any single occasion, 
chucked you into the street? 

Nina. But I want to be more perfect. 

Russ. Why do women always hanker after 
the impossible? 

J. Hartley Manners is the husband of Laurette 
Taylor and the author of plays in some of which 
she appears. His drama The Harp of Life has 
as its theme the love of two women, his mother 
and a courtesan, for a nineteen-year-old boy, and 
their willing self-sacrifice that he may go forward 
unbroken and unsmirched. The interesting 

[363] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

thing, aside from the strength of the play and its 
vivid study of adolescence, is the portrait of the 
mother. And now his play, The National 
Anthem, which caused so much discussion, is pro- 
curable in book form. 

Here I have been talking about East of Suez 
and The Love Match and have said nothing about 
The Circle or Milestones! But I suppose every- 
one knows that The Circle is by Maugham and 
was markedly successful when it was produced 
in New York; and surely everyone must 
know that Milestones is by Arnold Bennett and 
Edward Knoblock — one of the great plays of 
the last quarter century. I must take a mo- 
ment to speak of Sidney Howard's four act 
play, Swords. I think the best thing to do is to 
give what Kenneth Macgowan, an exception- 
ally able critic of the drama, said about the 
play: 

"Swords is as remarkable a play as America has 
ever produced. It is a drama of action on a par 
with The Jest, fused with the ecstasy of inspira- 
tion and the mysticism of the spirit and the body 
of woman. It sets Ghibelline and Guelph, Pope 
and Emperor, two nobles and a dog of the gutters 
fighting for a lady of strange and extraordinary 
beauty who is the bride of one noble and the host- 
age of the other. With the passions, the cruelties, 
and spiritual vision of the middle ages to build 
upon Swords sweeps upward to a scene of sudden, 
flashing conflict shot with the mystic and trium- 

[364] 



POETS AND PLAYWRIGHTS 

phant ecstasy which emanates from this glorious 
woman." 

American lovers of the drama have a special 
interest in the two volumes of The Plays of 
Hubert Henry Davies. At the time of his first 
success Mr. Davies was working in San Francisco, 
whither he had come from England. It was 
Frohman who made him an offer that brought 
him to New York and began the series of produc- 
tions which ended only with his death in 1917 
in Paris. These two volumes, very beautiful ex- 
amples of fine bookmaking, contain the successes: 
Cousin Kate, Captain Drew on heave, and The 
Mollusc. Among the other plays included are: 
A Single Man, Doormats, Outcasts, Mrs. Gor- 
ringe's Necklace, and Lady Epping's Lawsuit. 
Hugh Walpole has contributed a very touching 
introduction. 



[365] 



Chapter XXIII 

THE BOOKMAN FOUNDATION AND THE 
BOOKMAN 



THANK you very much for the May Book- 
man," writes Hugh Walpole (June, 1922). 
"I have been reading The Bookman during the 
last year and I congratulate Mr. Farrar most 
strongly upon it. The paper has now a personal- 
ity unlike any other that I know and it is the least 
dull of all literary papers ! I like especially the 
more serious articles, the series of sketches of lit- 
erary personalities seeming especially excellent to 
me." Mr. Walpole evidently had in mind the 
feature of The Bookman called "The Literary 
Spotlight." 

"The Bookman is alive. If there is a better 
quality in the long run for a general literary 
magazine to try for, I do not know what it is," 
writes Carl Van Doren, literary editor of The 
Nation. 

"Mr. Farrar has turned The Bookman into a 
monthly brimming with his own creative enthusi- 

[366] 



THE BOOKMAN FOUNDATION 

asm," says Louis Untermeyer. "It has technically 
as well as figuratively no rival." 

And Irvin S. Cobb declares: "By my way of 
thinking, it is the most informative, the most en- 
tertaining, and incidentally the brightest and most 
amusing publication devoted to literature and its 
products that I have ever seen." 

ii 

The idea of The Bookman Foundation first oc- 
curred in a discussion of the future of the maga- 
zine and the ampler purposes it was desired to 
have The Bookman serve. The idea had been ad- 
vanced that more than the future of the maga- 
zine should be considered ; those to whom the wel- 
fare of the magazine was a most important con- 
sideration distinctly felt that welfare to depend 
upon a healthy and thriving condition of Ameri- 
can literature and of American interest in 
American literature. The broadest possible view, 
as is so often the case, seemed the only ultimately 
profitable view. In what way could The Book- 
man serve the interests of American literature in 
which it was not already serving them'? How 
could public interest in American literature best 
be stimulated? 

The idea gradually took shape as a form of 
foundation, naturally to be called The Bookman 
Foundation, with a double purpose. Fundamen- 
tally The Bookman Foundation is being estab- 
lished to stimulate the study of American litera- 

[367] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

ture and its development; more immediately, and 
as the direct means to that end, the purpose of the 
Foundation will be to afford a vehicle for the best 
constructive criticism, spoken and written, on the 
beginnings and development of our literature. In 
association with the faculty of English at one of 
the larger and older American universities, Yale, 
the Foundation will establish a lectureship; and 
annually there will be given at Yale a lecture or 
a course of lectures on American literature by 
some distinguished writer or critic. It is hoped 
that, as the Foundation grows, other universities 
will be brought into co-operation with Yale so 
that the lectureship may move from centre to 
centre, stimulating to intelligent self-expression 
the varied elements that are contributing to our 
national growth. 

The lectures given on The Bookman Founda- 
tion will be published in book form by The Book- 
man in a handsome and uniform edition. Mem- 
bership in The Bookman Foundation will be by 
invitation. All members of the Foundation will 
be entitled to receive the published lectures with- 
out charge and they will also have the privilege 
of subscribing for certain first and limited edi- 
tions of notable American books. At the present 
writing, even so much as I have suggested is 
largely tentative, and I offer it for its essential 
idea; an executive committee of The Bookman 
Foundation, in co-operation with an advisory 
committee, the members of which committees have 

[368] 



THE BOOKMAN 

yet to be finally determined, will settle all details. 
By the time of this book's publication or even 
sooner, I expect a full announcement will have 
been made ; and for the correction of what I have 
stated I would refer the reader to The Bookman 
itself. 

iii 

I am not going to give a historical account of 
The Bookman here. The magazine is no new- 
comer among American periodicals. It has a rea- 
sonably old and highly honourable history. For 
long published by the house of Dodd, Mead & 
Company, it was acquired by George H. Doran 
Company and placed under the editorial direction 
of Robert Cortes Holliday. That was the begin- 
ning of a new vitality in its pages. Mr. Holliday 
was succeeded by Mr. Farrar, and now, in its 
fifty-sixth volume, The Bookman seems to the 
thousands who read it more interesting than ever 
before in its history. 

The roll call of its past and present contributors 
includes many of the representative names in con- 
temporary American and English literature. I 
will give a few: 
Joseph Hergesheimer 
Amy Lowell 
Siegfried Sassoon 
James Branch Cabell 
Mary Roberts Rinehart 
Zona Gale 

[369] 



WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET 

Fannie Hurst 

WILLIAM' McFEE 

Sherwood Anderson 
Hugh Walpole 
Frank Swinnerton 
Robert Frost 
Sara Teasdale 
Irvin S. Cobb 
Richard Le Gallienne 
Donn Byrne 
Christopher Morley 
Robert Cortes Holliday 
Johan Bojer 
William Rose Benet 
Edgar Lee Masters 
Kathleen Norris 
Frederick O'Brien 
D. H. Lawrence 
John Drinkwater 
Joseph C. Lincoln 
George Jean Nathan 
William Allen White 
Carl Sandburg 
Sinclair Lewis 
F. Scott Fitzgerald 
Eugene O'Neill 
H. L. Mencken 
John Dos Passos 
Elinor Wylie 
Gertrude Atherton 
Floyd Dell 

[37o] 



THE BOOKMAN 

iv 

Among the American essa)asts whose work has 
appeared in The Bookman before its publication 
in book form is Robert Cortes Holliday; among 
strikingly successful books that appeared serially 
in The Bookman was Donald Ogden Stewart's 
A Parody Outline of History. Among The Book- 
man's regular reviewers are Louis Untermeyer, 
Wilson Follett, Paul Elmer More, H. L. Menc- 
ken, Henry Seidel Canby and Maurice Francis 
Egan. Among writers of distinction whose short 
stories have first appeared in The Bookman are 
William McFee, Sherwood Anderson, Mary Aus- 
tin, and Johan Bojer; while the intimate personal 
portraits published under the general title "The 
Literary Spotlight" have Lytton Stracheyized 
contemporary American literature. Possibly it is 
in the department of poetry that The Bookman 
now shines the brightest (see the account of The 
Bookman Anthology in the previous chapter) ; if 
so, that may be because the editor, John Farrar, is 
himself a poet. 

Probably no other literary magazine in the 
world exhibits such a degree of personal contact 
between the editor, his readers, his contributors 
and the magazine's friends. This note of personal 
contact is constantly reflected in the magazine's 
pages; but anyone who has called upon the edi- 
tor of The Bookman once or twice will know 
explicitly just what I mean. 

[371] 



EPILOGUE 

I have been surprised, on looking back over 
these chapters, by the variety of the books I have 
talked about. That so diverse a list should be 
under a single imprint and should represent, with 
few exceptions, the publications of a single 
twelvemonth, seems to me very remarkable. I 
believe a majority of the books are the production 
of a single publishing season, the autumn of 1922, 
and the Doran imprint is but thirteen years old. 

"Of the making of books, there is no end" ; but 
of the making of any single book, there must 
come an end. Yet what is the end of a book but 
the beginning of new friendships ? 



THE END 



[372] 



INDEX 



Agate, James E., 49; Alarums and 
Excursions, 49; dramatic critic, 
50; Responsibility, 50; review 
by The Londoner, in The Book- 
man, 50 

Alarums and Excursions by James 
E. Agate, 49 

Alone in the Caribbean, by Fred- 
eric A. Fenger, 194 

Altar Steps, The, by Compton 
Mackenzie, 265, 266 

Amazing Adventures of Letitia 
Carberry, The, by Mary Roberts 
Rinehart, 108, 115, 116 

Amazing Interlude, The, by Mary 
Roberts Rinehart, 105, 115, 116 

Andrews, C. E., Old Morocco and 
the Forbidden Atlas, 193 

Ann and Her Mother, by O. 
Douglas, 249 

Anna of the Five Towns, by 
Arnold Bennett, 146, 149 

Art of Lawn Tennis, The, by Wil- 
liam T. Tilden, 213 

Asquith, Elizabeth (Princess An- 
toine Bibesco), daughter of Mar- 
got Asquith, 47 

Asquith, Margot, 89; mother of 
Elizabeth, 47; My Impressions 
of America, 122; The Autobi- 
ography of Margot Asquith, 122 

Autobiography of Margot Asquith, 
The, by Margot Asquith, 122 

Bailey, Margaret Emerson, Robin 
Hood's Barn, 194 

Balloons, by Princess Antoine Bi- 
besco, 47 

Banning, Margaret Culkin, Half 
Loaves, 253; Spellbinders, 252; 
This Marrying, 253 

Barton, Olive Roberts, Cloud Boat 
Stories, 162; Column, 162; re- 
view by Candace T. Stevenson, 
162-164; sister of Mary Roberts 
Rinehart, 161; Wonderful Land 
of Up, 162; work with children, 
161 

Beauty for Ashes, by Jean Suther- 
land, 262 

Belloc, Hilaire, 23, 77 



Benet, William Rose, Moons of 
Grandeur, 354, 355; review by 
Don Marquis, 354, 355; Benet, 
William Rose, The First Person 
Singular, 262, 263, 354 

Bennett, Arnold 133, 134, 144, 
145, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151; A 
Man from the North, 146, 149; 
Anna of the Five Towns, 146, 
149; article on Hugh Walpole, 
22, 23; booklet by George H. 
Doran Co., 150; books by, list 
of, 149, 150; Clayhanger, 148, 
149; comments of Frank Swin- 
nerton's Books, 225; comments 
on The Casement, by Frank 
Swinnerton, 236-242; criticism 
by New York Evening Post, 
148; Cupid and Commonsense, 
*33> 150; description of Hugh 
Walpole, 22; Friendship and 
Happiness, 303; How to Live on 
Twenty-four Hours a Day, 303; 
Lilian, 133; Love and Life, 
146; Married Life, 303; Mental 
Efficiency, 303; Milestones (with 
Edward Knoblauch), 364; Mr. 
Prohack, 133, 141, 149; on Hugh 
Walpole's courage, 25; Polite 
Farces, 146; Self and Self -Man- 
agement, 303; sketch of life by 
John W. Cunliffe, 144-148, 150; 
sources on, 150; The Author's 
Craft, 150; education of, 145; 
The Gates of Wrath, 146, 149; 
The Love Match, 361, 364; The 
Old Wives' Tale, 133, 149; The 
Truth About an Author, 144, 150 

Benson, E. F., Peter, 261 

Between Two Thieves, by Richard 
Dehan (Clotilde Graves), 198, 
200, 210 

Bibesco, Princess Antoine (Eliza- 
beth Asquith), 47; Balloons, 47; 
I Have Only Myself to Blame, 
47 

Birds and Other Poems, The, by 
J. C. Squire, 351; Quotation 
from, 351; 

Black Gang, The, by Cyril Mc- 
Neile, 70 



[373] 



INDEX 



Black Casar's Clan, by Albert 
Payson Terhune, 71 

Black Gold, by Albert Payson 
Terhune, 71; Foreword to, by 
Albert Payson Terhune, 71-74 

Blaker, Richard, The Voice in 
the Wilderness, 263 

Bookman, The; articles by Robert 
Cortes Holliday, 221; Comment 
on Richard Dehan, 198, an; 
Comments on by Hugh Walpole, 
Carl Van Doren, Irvin S. Cobb, 
Louis Untermeyer, 367; List of 
contributors, 370, 371; List of 
Reviewers, 371 

Book of Humorous Verse, by 
Carolyn Wells, 99 

Bookman Anthology of Verse 
(1922), 356; Contributors, 356, 
357 

Bookman Foundation, The, 367, 
368; lectures on, 368 

Books in General, Third Series, 
by J. C. Squire, 44 

Bottome, Phyllis (Mrs. A. E. 
Forbes Dennis), 258; Acquaint- 
ances, 259; The Kingfisher, 
260 

Boy Journalist Series, by Francis 
Rolt-Wheeler, 159, 161 

Breaking Point, The, by Mary 
Roberts Rinehart, 105; resume 
of, 105-7, 117 

Broome Street Straws, by Robert 
Cortes Holliday, 52 

Broun, Heywood, 40; columnist, 
Pieces of Hate and Other 
Enthusiasms, 41; Subjects 
touched, 41, 42, 43 

Buchan, John, The Path of the 
King, 249; The Thirty-nine 
Steps 

Buckrose, J. E. (Mrs. Falconer 
Jameson), A Knight Among 
Ladies, 251 

Bulldog Drummond, by Cyril 
McNeile, 70 

Burke, Thomas, 187, 189, 190; 
More Limehouse Nights, 187; 
Nights in London, 190; Reasons 
given for his characters, 187, 
188, 189; The London Spy, 189 

Byron, May, Billy Butt's Adven- 
ture, 153; Jack-a-Dandy, 153; 
Little Jumping Joan, 153; Old 
Friends in New Frocks, 153 

Candles that Burn, by Mrs. Kilmer 
Captives, The, by Hugh Walpole, 

24, 27, 30, 31; won Tait Black 

Prize, 1920, 30 



Carnival, by Compton Mackenzie, 
265 

Casement, The, by Frank Swin- 
nerton, 236, 242 

Cathedral, The, by Hugh Wal- 
pole, 19, 31; at Polchester, 19; 
review of, 19 

Century of Banking in New York, 
1822-1922, A, by Henry Wysham 
Lanier, 193 

Chambers, Robert W., article on, 
by Rupert Hughes, 320; Eris, 
31 1. 3i7, 320; In the Quarter, 
317, 318; Iole, 318, 319; list of 
books by, 318, 319, 320; Sources 
On, 320; Story-teller, 308; The 
Flaming Jewel, 311, 320; The 
King in Yellow, 317. 318; The 
Talkers, 317, 320; The Witch 
of Ellangowan, 318; With the 
Band (poem), 317 

Chaste Wife, The, by Frank 
Swinnerton, 226, 243 

Chinese Metal, by E. G. Kemp, 
190; comment by Sao-Ke Al- 
fred Sze, 191 

Circle, The, by W. Somerset 
Maugham, 289, 292, 364 

Circuit Rider's Wife, A, by Corra 
Harris, 257 

Circular Staircase, The, by Mary 
Roberts Rinehart, no, 114, 
116 

Claim Jumpers, The, by Stewart 
Edward White, 55, 63, 66 

Clayhanger, by Arnold Bennett, 
148, 149 

Cloud Boat Stories, by Olive 
Roberts Barton, 162 

Cobb, Irvin S., 89, 241; An Occur- 
rence up a Side Street, 176, 
180; as a humorist, 179; at 
Portsmouth Peace Conference, 
177, 1 7^> biography by Robert 
H. Davis, 172-183, 186; books 
by, 184; comments on The 
Bookman, 367; description of 
self, 182, 183; dimensions of, 
166; editorial work, 175, 176; 
Fishhead, 176, 180; J. Poin- 
dexter, Colored, 169, 185; lec- 
ture by Gelett Burgess, 179; 
Plays by, 185; report of Thaw 
Trial, 178; Sources on, 186; 
Stickfuls, 169, 185; The Belled 
Buzzard, 176, 180; The Escape 
of Mr. Trimm, 178, 180, 184 

Collected Parodies, by J. C. 
Squire, 98; Selections, 98, 99 

Coming of the Peoples, The, by 
Francis Rolt-Wheeler, 161 



[374] 



INDEX 



Confessions of a Well-Meaning 
Woman, The, by Stephen Mc- 
Kenna, 337. 344, 346; Quota- 
tions from London Times, 337- 
339; Sample of, 344, 345 

Conjuror's House, by Stewart 
Edward White, 66 

Conkling, Hilda, 356 

Connor, Ralph, 264 

Conrad, Joseph, A Critical Study 
of Walpole, 31; experiences 
similar, 25; introductory note 
to Anthology, 28 

Cooperative Movement, by Dr. 
James B. Warbasse, 300 

Coquette, by Frank Swinnerton, 
226, 243 

Creative Spirit in Industry, The, 
by Robert B. Wolf, 300 

Crisis of the Naval War, by Vis- 
count Jellicoe of Scapa, 329; 
review of, in Proceedings of 
the United States Naval Insti- 
tute, 329, 330, 33i 

Crome Yellow, by Aldous Huxley, 
34 

Cummins, Col. Stevenson Lyle, 
in Who's Who, 156, 157; Plays 
for Children, 157 

Cupid and Commonsense, by Ar- 
nold Bennett, 133, 150 



Dana, H. W. L., 297; Social 
Forces in Literature, 300 

Dancers in the Dark, by Dorothy 
Speare, 255, 256 

Daniels, Josephus, Our Navy at 
War, 321, 322 

Dark Forest, The, by Hugh Wal- 
pole, 16, 28, 31 

Davey, Norman, 36, 37; Guinea 
Girl, 36, 37; The Gas Turbine, 
37; The Pilgrim of a Smile, 36 

Davies. Hubert Henry, Plays of, 
A Single Man, 365; Captain 
Drew on Leave, 365 ; Cousin 
Kate, 365; Doormats, 365; 
Lady Epping's Law Suit, 365; 
Mrs. Gorringe's Necklace, 365; 
Outcasts, 365 ; The Mollusc, 365 

Davis, Robert H., 186; biographer 
of Irvin S. Cobb, 172, 186; Box 
Score of Writers, 183 

Days Before Yesterday, by Lord 
Frederic Hamilton, 131 

de Stael, Madame, 128 

"Death of Lully," in Limbo, by 
Aldous Huxley, 36 

D eaves Affair, The, by Hulbert 
Footner, 75 



December Love, by Robert 
Hichins, 249 

Dehan, Richard (Clotilde Graves), 
196, 197, 199, 200, 201, 204, 
209, 210, 211; Between Two 
Thieves, 198, 200, 210; books 
by, 210; Comment by The Book- 
man, 198; sources on, 211; 
That Which Hath Wings, 200, 
210; The Dop Doctor, 196, 200, 
210; The Eve of Pascua, 201, 
210; The Just Steward, 201, 
202, 203, 205, 206, 207, 208, 
210 

Denham, Sir James, Memoirs of 
the Memorable, 119 

Dennis, Mrs. A. E. Forbes, see 
Phyllis Bottome, 258 

Dircks, Helen, Passenger, 236 

Djemal Pasha, Memoirs of, 122 

Doors of the Night, by Frank L. 
Packard, 68, 69 

Dop Doctor, The, by Richard 
Dehan (Clotilde Graves), 196, 
200, 210 

Dos Passos, John, 356; A Push- 
cart at the Curb, 347; de Una- 
muno, Miguel, 39; Manrique, 
Jorge, Ode, 39; Rosinante to 
The Road Again, 38, 347; Three 
Soldiers, 347 

Douglas, O., 249; Ann and Her 
Mother, 249; Penny Plain, 24g; 
Sister of John Buchan, 249 

Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan, 115; 
Spiritualism and Rationalism, 
302; The New Revelation, 302; 
The Vital Message, 302; The 
Wanderings of a Spiritualist, 
302 

Dreiser, Theodore, review of 
Human Bondage, in New Re- 
public, 273-277 

Duchess of Wrexe, The, by Hugh 
Walpole, 19, 31 



Earth's Story, The, by Frederic 

Arnold Kummer, 155 
East of Sues, by W. Somerset 

Maugham, 284, 292, 360 
Education of Eric Law, The, see 

The Sensationalists, by Stephen 

McKenna, 342, 346 
Ellis, Havelock, Little Essays of 

Love and Virtue, 302; Emperor 

Francis Joseph and His Times, 

The, by Baron Margutti, 130 
English Literature During the 

Last Half Century, by John W. 

Cunliffe, 144, 150 



[375] 



INDEX 



Eris, by Robert W. Chambers, 

311, 317, 320; from extracts, 

311-316, 320 
Escape of Mr. Trimm, The, by 

Irvin S. Cobb, 178, 180, 184 
Essays on Religion, by T. R. 

Glover, 305 
Eve of Pascua, The, by Richard 

Dehan (Clotilde Graves), 201, 

210 
Eyes of Love, The, by Corra 

Harris, 257; extract from, 

257-8 

Facing Reality, by Esme Wing- 
field-Stratford, 300; Chapter 
titles, 300; introduction, ex- 
tracts from, 300, 301 

Fairies and Chimneys, by Rose 
Fyleman, 158; Quotation from, 
158 

Fairy Flute, The, by Rose Fyle- 
man, 158 

Farnsworth, Sidney, Illumination 
and Its Development in the 
Present Day, 223 

Farrar, John, Editor of The 
Bookman, 94, 357; poet, 371; 
Editor, see The Bookman, 
371 

Fenger, Frederic A., Alone in 
the Caribbean, 194 

First Days of Man, The, by 
Frederic Arnold Kummer, 155, 
156 

First Person Singular, The, by 
William Rose Benet, 262, 263, 
354 

Flaming Jewel, The, by Robert 
W. Chambers, 311, 320 

Follett, Wilson, comparisons, 52; 
Reviewer The Bookman, 371; 
Some Modern Novelists, 150 

Footner, Hulbert, The Deaves 
Affair, 75; The Owl Taxi, 74, 
75 

Forbes, Lady Angela, Memories 
and Base Details, 130; Memo- 
ries Discreet and Indiscreet, 
130; More Indiscretions, 129 

Forbes, Rosita, The Secret of the 
Sahara: Kufara, 192 

Fortitude, by Hugh Walpole, 21, 
23, 27, 31; theme of, 21, 31 

Forty Years On, by Lord Ernest 
Hamilton, 132 

"Frankincense and Myrrh," from 
Pieces of Hate, by Heywood 
Broun, 41, 42, 43 

From Now On, by Frank L. 
Packard, 68, 69 



Further Adventures of Jimtnie 
Dale, The, by Frank L. Pack- 
ard, 68, 69 

Further Adventures of Lad, by 
Albert Payson Terhune, 215; 
extracts from, 216 

Fyleman, Rose, Fairies and Chim- 
neys, 158; The Fairy Flute, 
158 

Gabriel, Gilbert W., 53; Jiminy, 
novel by, 53; music critic, N. 
Y. Sun, 53; Novelist, 53; sub- 
stitute for Don Marquis, 54 

Gates of Wrath, The, by Arnold 
Bennett, 146, 149 

Gavit, John Palmer, account of 
Stewart Edward White, 65, 66, 
67 

Geister, Edna, Ice-breakers and 
the Ice-Breaker Herself, 219; 
It Is to Laugh, 219 

Gist of Golf, The, by Harry Var- 
don, 213 

Giving and Receiving, by E. V. 
Lucas, 307 

Glover, T. R., Essays on Re- 
ligion, 305; Jesus in the Ex- 
perience of Man, 305; Poets 
and Pilgrims, 3°5", Poets and 
Puritans, 305; The Jesus of 
History, 305; The Nature and 
Purpose of a Christian Society, 
305; The Pilgrim, 305 

Gods and Mr. Perrin, The, by 
Hugh Walpole, 22, 27, 31 

Gold, by Stewart Edward White, 
61, 67 

Golden Scarecrow, The, 15, 27, 
31 

Gold-Killer, by John Prosper, 75 

Grand Fleet, The, by Viscount 
Jellicoe of Scapa, 329 

Graves, Clotilde (Richard De- 
han), 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 
204, 209, 210, 2U ; A Mother 
of Three, 199, _ 210; Nitocris, 
199, 210; Puss in Boots, 199 

Green Mirror, The, by Hugh 
Walpole, 19, 27, 31 

"Greenow, Richard," of Limbo, 
by Aldous Huxley, 36 

Guinea Girl, by Norman Davey, 
36, 37 

Guest, Leslie Haden, The Struggle 
for Power in Europe (1917- 
21), 323, 324 

Haggard, Andrew C. P., Madame 
de Stael; Her Trials and 
Triumphs, 129 



[376] 



INDEX 



Half Loaves, by Margaret Culkin 
Banning, 253 

Hambourg, Mark, How to Play 
the Piano, 219, 220 

Hamilton, Lord Ernest, Forty 
Years On, 131 

Hamilton, Lord Frederic, Days 
Before Yesterday, 131; Diplo- 
matic Services, 131; Education, 
131; Here, There and Every- 
where, 131; The Vanished 
Pomps of Yesterday, 131 

"Happy Families," in Limbo, by 
Aldous Huxley, 36 

Happy Family, The, by Frank 
Swinnerton, 226, 238, 242 

Harcourt, Edward Vernon, 118 

Harcourt, Sir William, George 
Granville Venables Vernon, Life 
of, 118 

"Harlequin," from The Birds and 
Other Poems, by J. C. Squire, 
35i» 352 

Harp of Life, The, by J. Hartley 
Manners, 363 

Harris, Corra, 257, 264; A Cir- 
cuit Rider's Wife, 257; The 
Eyes of Love, 257 

Harrison, Marguerite E., Ma- 
rooned in Russia, 192 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, A Won- 
der Book, 165; The Scarlet 
Letter, 327, 328 

Hayhurst, Dr. Emery, Labour 
and Health, 299 

Henry, Alice, Women and the 
Labour Movement, 299 

Here, There and Everywhere, by 
Lord Frederic Hamilton, 131 

Herford, Oliver, Neither Here 
Nor There, 95 

Hergesheimer, Joseph, Apprecia- 
tion of Hugh Walpole, 15, 29, 
30, 31 

Herm, home of Compton Mac- 
kenzie, 267 

Herman Melville: Mariner and 
Mystic, by Raymond W. 
Weaver, 325; review by Carl 
Van Vechten, 325-328 

Hermit of Far End, The, by 
Margaret Pedler, 256 

Heroes of the Ruins, by Francis 
Rolt-Wheeler, 160 

Heterogeneous Magis of Maugh- 
am, The, 270 

Hichins, Robert, The Garden of 
Allah, 249; December Love, 249 

History of Sea Power, A, by Wil- 
liam O. Stevens and Allan West- 
cott, 331; Admiral Caspar F. 



Goodrich, review of, in The 
Weekly Review, 331-333; Ex- 
tracts from, 332, 333 

Holliday, Robert Cortes, 52; busi- 
ness connections, 221; Broome 
Street Straws, 52; editor of The 
Bookman, 369; Memoirs in 
Joyce Kilmer, Poems, Essays 
and Letters, 53; Men and Books 
and Cities, 52; Peeps at Peo- 
ple, 52; praise by James Hun- 
ecker, 52; Study of Booth Tark- 
ington, 53; Turns About Town, 
52; Walking Stick Papers, 51; 
Writing as a Business; A Prac- 
tical Guide for Authors, 220 

Houghton, Mrs. Hadwin, See 
Wells, Carolyn 

House of Dreams Come True, The, 
by Margaret Pedler, 256 

House of Five Swords, The, by 
Tristram Tupper, 247, 248 

"Houses" from Main Street and 
other Poems, by Joyce Kilmer, 
349, 35o 

How to Live on Twenty-four 
Hours a Day, by Arnold Ben- 
nett, 303 

How to Play the Piano, by Mark 
Hambourg, 219, 220 

Howard, Sidney, Swords, 364 

Hughes, Rupert, article on Rob- 
ert W. Chambers, 320; on Rob- 
ert W. Chambers, 311 

Hugh Walpole Anthology, A, by 
Hugh Walpole, 27, 32; divisions 
of, 27; Country Places, 27; Lon- 
don, 27; Men and Women, 27; 
Russia, 27; Some Children, 27; 
Some Incidents, 27 

Hunting Hidden Treasure in the 
Andes, by Francis Rolt-Wheel- 
er, 159 

Huxley, Aldous, 34, 35, 36; 
Beauty, 36; Comment by Miichael 
Sadlier, 34; Crome Yellow, 34; 
Disciple of Laforgue, 35; 
L'Apres-Midi-d'un Faune, trans- 
lation by, 35; Limbo, 34, 36; 
Mortal Coils, 34, 35; "Permu- 
tation among the Nightingales," 
play by, 35; poet and writer of 
prose, 35; Quotations from Mor- 
tal Coils, 35; Splendour, by 
Numbers, 36; the sensualist, 36; 
Translator of Laforgue, 35; 
translation of The Walk, 35 

/ Have Only Myself to Blame, 
by Princess Bibesco, 47; ex- 
tract from, 47, 48, 49 



[377] 



INDEX 



Ice-breakers and the Ice-Breaker 

Herself , by Edna Geister, 219 
Illumination and Its Development 

in the Present Day, by Sidney 

Farnsworth, 223 
Imprudence, by F. E. Mills Young, 

263 
In the Days Before Columbus, by 

Francis Rolt-Wheeler, 160 
In the Quarter, by Robert W. 

Chambers, 317, 318 
Iole, by Robert W. Chambers, 318, 

319 
Irish Free State, The, by Albert 

C. White, 191; Book Value, 192 
Isn't That Just Like a Man: Oh, 

Well, You Know How Women 

Are! 89 
It Is to Laugh, by Edna Geister, 

219 

Jacks. L. P., editor of Hibbert 
Journal, 19s; The Legends of 
Smokeover, 194 

Jameson, Mrs. Falconer, see 7. 
E. Buckrose 

Jellicoe, Viscount, of Scapa, The 
Crisis of the Naval War, 329; 
The Grand Fleet, 329 

Jimmy Dale and the Phantom 
Clue, by Frank L. Packard, 69 

Joining in Public Discussion, by 
Alfred Dwight Sheffield, 297; 
sections of, 299 

Judge, The, by Rebecca West, 78; 
dedication and review, 84, 85, 
86; extract from, 81, 82; ma- 
terial employed, 82, 83 

Judgment of Charis, The, by Mrs. 
Baillie Reynolds, 76 

Just Steward, The, by Richard 
Dehan (Clotilde Graves), 201; 
samples from, 201-203, 205, 206, 
207, 208, 210 

Jungle Tales, Adventures in In- 
dia, by Howard Anderson Mus- 
ser, 156 

K, by Mary Roberts Rinehart, 
107, 108, 116 

Kemp, E. G., Chinese Mettle, 190 

Kerr, Sophie, 244; Autobiography, 
244-246; editor Woman's Home 
Companion, 245 ; One Thing is 
Certain, 246; Painted Meadows, 
246; quotations from letter by, 
246, 247 

Kilmer, Joyce, Main Street and 
Other Poems, 349; Poems, Es- 
says and Letters, 53; Memoirs, 



by Robert Cortes Holliday, 53; 

Trees and Other Poems, 349 
Kilmer, Mrs., Candles That Burn, 

35o; Vigils, 350 
Kingfisher, The, by Phyllis Bot- 

tome, 260 
King in Yellow, The, by Robert 

W. Chambers, 317, 318 
Knight Among Ladies, A, by J. 

E. Buckrose, 251 
Knight, Captain, C. W. R., Wild 

Life in the Tree Tops, 214 
Kummer, Frederic Arnold, The 

Earth's Story, 155; The First 

Days of Man, 155, 156 

Labour and Health, by Dr. Emery 
Hayhurst, 299 

Lad: A Dog, by Albert Payson 
Terhune, 214 

Lady Frederick, by W. Somerset 
Maugham, 289, 291 

Lady Lilith, by Stephen McKenna, 
342, 343. 346; Comments by au- 
thor, 342, 343, 346 

Lamp of Fate, The, by Margaret 
Pedler, 256 

Land of Footprints, The, by Stew- 
art Edward White, 55, 67 

Lanier, Henry Wysham, A Cen- 
tury of Banking in New York: 
1822-1922, 193 

Lardner, Ring W., appreciation 
of Charles E. Van Loan, 212; 
Sport, 212 

Laughter, Ltd., by Nina Wilcox 
Putnam, 90 

Legends of Smokeover, The, by 
L. P. Jacks, 194 

Life and Letters, by J. C. Squire, 46 

Life of Sir William Vernon Har- 
court, The, 118 

Lilian, by Arnold Bennett, 133, 
137-141, 149; extract from, 137- 
141, 149 

Limbo, by Aldous Huxley, 34, 36; 
Death of Lully, 36; Happy Fam- 
ilies, 36 

Literary Spotlight, The; The 
Bookman, 371 

Little Essays of Love and Virtue, 
by Havelock Ellis, 302 

Little Jumping Joan, by May By- 
ron, 153 

Liza of Lambeth, by W. Somer- 
set Maugham, 286, 287, 291 

Lloyd George, critical sketch, by 
E. T. Raymond, 121 

Lodge, Sir Oliver, 115, 301 

London Mercury, edited by J. C. 
Squire 



[378] 



INDEX 



London Spy, The, by Thomas 
Burke, 189 

Long Lire the King, by Mary 
Roberts Rinehart, 115, 116 

Love Match, The, by Arnold Ben- 
nett, 361, 364; Extracts from, 
361-363 

Lowndes, Mrs. Belloc, apprecia- 
tion of Hugh Walpole, 23, 24; 
What Timmy Did, 77 

Lucas, E. V., Giving and Receiv- 
ing, 307; Roving East and Rov- 
ing West, 307 

Mackenzie, Compton, Carnival, 
265; Plasher's Mead, 265; Poor 
Relations, 265; Rich Relatives, 
265; Sinister Street, 265; The 
Altar Steps, 265, 266, 269; The 
Parson's Progress, 266; visit by 
Simon Pure, 266-269 

MacQuarrie, Hector, on W. Som- 
erset Maugham, 277, 284, 290; 
Tahiti Days, 270 

Madame de Stael; Her Trials and 
Triumphs, by Andrew C. P. 
Haggard, 124-129 

Main Street and Other Poems, by 
Joyce Kilmer, 349 

Man from the North, A, by Ar- 
nold Bennett, 146, 149 

Man in Lower Ten, The, by Mary 
Roberts Rinehart, 114, 116 

Man in Ratcatcher, The, by Cyril 
McNeile, 70 

Manners, J. Hartley, The Harp of 
Life, 363 

Maradick at Forty, by Hugh Wal- 
pole, 26, 31 

Margutti, Baron von, The Em- 
peror Francis Joseph and His 
Times, 130 

Marooned in Moscow, by Mar- 
guerite E. Harrison, 192 

Married Life, by Arnold Bennett, 
303 

Maugham W. Somerset, article by 
Hector MacQuarrie, 292; books 
by, 291, 292; Caroline, 289, 292; 
East of Suez, 284, 292, 360; 
education of, 286; father of, 
286; wife of, 286; Lady Fred- 
erick, 289, 291; Lisa of Lam- 
beth, 286, 287, 291; Mrs. Crad- 
dock, 287, 288, 291; Mrs. Dot, 
289, 291; Of Human Bondage, 
270, 273-77, 287, 291; On a 
Chinese Screen, 284-285, 291; 
playright, 288; sources on, 292; 
The Circle, 289, 292; The hetero- 
geneous magic of, 270; The 



Moon and Sixpence, 270, 277, 

278, 279, 284, 287, 291 
McCormick, W. B., Army and 

Navy Journal, Editor of, 321; 

Comment on Josephus Daniels' 

Our Navy at War, 321, 322, 323 
McFee, William, 371; Extracts 

from preface to Spindrift, by 

Milton Raison, 352, 353 
McKenna, Stephen, 334, 337, 338, 

339, 340, 34L 342, 343, 34S, 
346; Between Two Worlds, 341, 
346; Books by, 345, 346; Com- 
ments on Lady Lilith, 342, 343; 
education of, 340; Lady Lilith, 
342, 343, 346; Leopold Mc- 
Kenna, father of, 340; Midas 
and Son, 341, 346; Ninety-Six 
Hours' Leave, 341, 346; person- 
ality, 343; Sheila Intervenes, 

340, 345; Sonia, 339, 340, 341. 
342, 343, 346; Sonia Married, 

341, 342, 346; Sources on, 346; 
The Confessions of a Well- 
Meaning Woman, 337, 344, 346; 
The Education of Eric Lane, 

342, 346; The Reluctant Lover, 

340, 345; The Secret Victory, 
342, 346; The Sensationalists, 

341, 342; The Sixth Sense, 340, 
345; Translator of Poltinus, 
339; war service, 340; While I 
Remember, 324, 346 

McNeile, Cyril, Bulldog Drum- 
mond, 70; The Black Gang, 70; 
The Man in Ratcatcher, 70 

Melville, Herman, Mardi, 327; 
Moby Dick, 327, 328; Omoo, 
326; Pierre, 327; Typee, 326 

Memoirs of Dj'emal Pasha, The, 
122 

Memoirs of the Memorable, by 
Sir James Denham, 119; Bea- 
consfield, Lord, 119; Beresford, 
Lord Marcus, 119; Bishop of 
London, 119; Bishop of Man- 
chester, 119; Browning, Robert, 
119; Byron, Lord, 119; Carroll, 
Lewis, 119; Dunedin, Lord, 119; 
Gladstone, 119; Howard, Car- 
dinal, 119 

Memories and Base Details, by 
Lady Angela Forbes, 130 

Memories Discreet and Indiscreet, 
by Lady Angela Forbes, 129 

Men and Books and Cities, by 
Robert Cortes Holliday, 52 

Men Who Make Our Novels, The, 
by George Gordon, 55, 67, 320 

Merry Heart, The, by Frank Swin- 
nerton, 236, 242 



[379] 



INDEX 



Midas and Son, by Stephen Mc- 
Kenna, 341, 342, 346 

Milestones, by Arnold Bennett 
and Edward Knoblock, 364 

Milne, A. A., Mr. Pim, 261 

Miracle Man, The, by Frank L. 
Packard, 68 

Miscellanies — Literary and His- 
torical, by Lord Rosebery, 123 

Moffatt, Dr. James, The Approach 
of the New Testament, 296; 
New Translation of the New 
Testament, 293; New Transla- 
tion of the Old Testament, 296; 
The Parallel Testament, 293 

Mollusc, The, by Hubert Henry 
Davies, 365 

Monaghan, Elizabeth A., What to 
Eat and How to Prepare It, 218 

Moon and Sixpence, The, by W. 
Somerset Maugham, 270, 278, 
279, 284, 287, 291 

Moon Out of Reach, The, by Mar- 
garet Pedler, 256 

Moons of Grandeur, by William 
Rose Benet, 354, 355; Don 
Marquis, review of, 354 J Quo- 
tation from, 355 

Moore, Annie Carroll, Roads to 
Childhood, 152 

More Indiscretions, by Lady An- 
gela Forbes, 129 

More Limehouse Nights, by 
Thomas Burke, 187 

Morley, Christopher, A Rocking 
Horse, 348; Translations from 
the Chinese, 349 

Mortal Coils, by Aldous Huxley, 

34, 35 

Mr. Lloyd George: A Biographi- 
cal and Critical Sketch, by E. 
T. Raymond, 120 

Mr. Pim, by A. A. Milne, 261 

Mr. Prohock, by Arnold Bennett, 
133. 141, J 49J extracts from, 
141-144, 149 

Mrs. Craddock, by W. Somerset 
Maugham, 287, 288, 291; ex- 
tract from, 288, 291 

Musser, Howard Anderson, Jungle 
Tales, Adventures in India, 156 

My Creed: The Way to Happi- 
ness — As I Found It, Mary Rob- 
erts Rinehart, 117 

My Impressions of America, by 
Margot Asquith, 122 

Myers, A. Wallis, Twenty Years 
of Lawn Tennis, 213 

Neither Here Nor There, by Oli- 
ver Herford, 95 



Nene, 264; Comment by Walter 
Prichard Eaton, 265; Goncourt 
Prize, won by, 264 

New Revelation, The, by Sir Ar- 
thur Conan Doyle, 302 

New Translation of the New Tes- 
tament, by Dr. James Moffatt, 
293; extracts from, 293-296 

New Translation of the Old Tes- 
tament, by Dr. James Moffatt, 
296 

Nicolette, by Baroness Orczy, 248 

Night Operator, The, by Frank L. 
Packard, 68 

Nights in London, by Thomas 
Burke, 190 

Ninety-six Hours' Leave, by Ste- 
phen McKenna, 341, 34^ 

Nocturne, by Frank Swinnerton, 
225, 233, 235, 239, 243; Com- 
ment by H. G. Wells, 233-235 

Of Human Bondage, by W. Som* 
erset Maugham, 270; review by 
Theodore Dreiser, 273-277, 287, 
291 

Old Morocco and the Forbidden 
Atlas, by C. E. Andrews, 193 

Old Wives' Tales, The. by Ar- 
nold Bennett, 133, 149; inspira- 
tion of, 147, 149 

On a Chinese Screen, by W. Som- 
erset Maugham, 284, 291; ex- 
tract from, 284-285 

On the Staircase, by Frank Swin- 
nerton, 226, 243 

On Tiptoe: A Romance of the 
Redwoods, by Stewart Edward 
White, 59, 67 

One Thing is Certain, by Sophie 
Kerr, 246 

Our Navy at War, by Josephus 
Daniels, 321; Comment on, by 
W. B. McCormick, 321, 322, 323 

Outcasts, by Hubert Henry Da- 
vies, 365 

Orczy, Baroness, Nicolette, 248 

Owl Taxi, The, by Hulbert Foot- 
ner, 74, 75 

Packard, Frank L., Doors of the 
Night, 68; education of, 68; 
From Now On, 68; Pawned, 68; 
The Adventures of Jimmy Dale, 
68, 69; The Further Adventures 
of Jimmie Dale, 68; The Miracle 
■ Man, 68 ; The Night Operator, 
68; The Phantom Clue, 69; The 
Wire Devils, 68 

Painted Meadows, by Sophie 
Kerr, 246 



[380] 



INDEX 



Parallel New Testament, The, by 
Dr. James Moffatt, 293 

Parody Outline of History, A, by- 
Donald Ogden Stewart, 93, 94. 
371; see The Bookman, 371 

Parson's Progress, The, by Comp- 
ton Mackenzie. 266 

Passenger, by Helen Dircks, 236 

Patricia Brent, Spinster, anony- 
mous, 261 

Pawned, by Frank L. Packard, 68 

Pedler, Margaret, The Hermit of 
Far End, 256; The House of 
Dreams Come True, 256; The 
Lamp of Fate, 256; The Moon 
Out of Reach, 256; The Splen- 
did Folly, 256 

Peeps at People, by Robert Cortes 
Holliday 

Penny Plain, by O. Douglas, 249 

Perfect Behaviour, by Donald Og- 
den Stewart, 93, 945 motive of, 

94 

Perin, Dr. George L., founder of 
Franklin Square House for 
Girls, 304; on autosuggestion, 
304; Self Healing Simplified, 
304 

"Permutations Among the Night- 
ingales," by Aldous Huxley, 35 

Peter, by E. F. Benson, 261 

Pieces of Hate, by Heywood 
Broun, 41 

Pilgrim of a Smile, The, by Nor 
man Davey, 36 

Plays for Children, by Col. Ste 
venson Lyle Cummins, 157 

Plays of Hubert Henry Davies 
The, 365 t „ 

Plotting in Pirate Seas, by Fran 
cis Rolt-Wheeler, 159 

Poems: Second Series, by J. C 
Squire, 35 1 m _ 

Poets and Puritans, by T. R 
Glover, 305; preface, 306 

Poindexter, J., Colored, by Irvin 
S. Cobb, 169, 185; extract from 
170-171, 185 

pomp of Power, The, anony 
mous, 119 

Preston, Keith, Splinters, 358, 359 

Prosper, John, Gold-Killer, 75 

Publishing as a business, 199 

Pure, Simon, visit to Compton 
Mackenzie, 266-269 

Pushcart at the Curb, A, by John 
Dos Passos, 347; General Head- 
ings of, 347 

Putnam, Nina Wilcox, Laughter, 
Ltd., 90; story in American 
Magazine, 91, 92; style of, 90; 



Tomorrow We Diet, 90; West 
Broadway, 88, 90 

"Quai de la Tournelle," from a 
Pushcart at the Curb, by John 
Dos Passos, Quotation from, 348 

Quest of the Western World, The, 
by Francis Rolt-Wheeler, 160 

Rackham, Arthur, artist, 165 

Raison, Milton, Spindrift, 352, 353 

Raymond, Ernest, Tell England, 
250 

Raymond, E. T., Mr. Lloyd 
George: A Biographical and 
Critical Sketch, 120; Uncensored 
Celebrities, 120 

Recollections and Reflections, by 
A Woman of No Importance, 
129 

Reeve, Mrs. Winnifred, see Onoto 
Watanna, 254 

Responsibility, by James E. Agate, 
49 

Return of Alfred, The, anonymous, 
261 

Reynolds, Mrs. Baillie, The Judg- 
ment of Charis, 76 

Riddell, Lord, Some Things That 
Matter, 303 

Rinehart, Mrs. Mary R., 89; books 
by, 116; K., 107, 108, 116; Long 
Live the King, 115, 116; meth- 
ods of work, 1 11; My Creed: 
The Way to Happiness, 117; 
My Public, 117; parents of, 108; 
quotation from, 102-103; Sources 
on, 117; The Amazing Adven- 
tures of Letitia Carberry, 108, 
115, 116; The Amazing Inter- 
lude, 105, 115, 116; The Bat, a 
collaboration with Avery Hop- 
wood, 114; The Breaking Point, 
105, 117; The Circular Stair- 
case, no, 114, 116; The Man 
in Lower Ten, 114, n6; Tish, 
108, 115, 116; vitality of, 102 

Roads to Childhood, by Annie 
Carroll Moore, 152 

Robin Hood's Bam, by Margaret 
Emerson Bailey, 194 

Rocking Horse, The, by Christo- 
pher Morley, 348; Quotation 
from, 348 

Rolt - Wheeler, Francis, "Boy 
Journalist Series," 159, 161; He- 
roes of the Ruins, 160; Hunt- 
ing Hidden Treasures in the 
Andes, 159; In the Days Be- 
fore Columbus, 160; Plotting in 
Pirate Seas, 159; The Coming 



[381] 



INDEX 



of the Peoples, 161; The Quest 
of the Western World, 160; 
wanderings of, 158 

Rosebery, Lord. Miscellanies — Lit- 
erary and Historical, 123 

Rosinante to the Road Again, by 
John Dos Passos, 38, 347 

Roving East and Roving West, by 
E. V. Lucas, 



Sadlier, Michael, comment on 
Huxley, 34 

Saxton, Eugene F., 67; account of 
Stewart Edward White, 61, 62, 
63. 64, 65 

Secret of the Sahara: Kufara, by 
Rosita Forbes, 192, 193 

Secret Victory, The. See The 
Sensationalists, by Stephen Mc- 
Kenna, 342, 346 

Self Healing Simplified, by Dr. 
George L. Perin, 304 

Sensationalists, The, by Stephen 
McKenna, 341; Lady Lilith, 342; 
The Education of Eric Lane, 
342; The Secret Victory, 342 

September, by Frank Swinnerton, 
225, 226, 243 

"Seymour, Hugh," of The Golden 
Scarecrow, 16, 21 

Sheffield, Alfred Dwight, Joining 
in Public Discussion, 297 

Sheridan, C. M., The Stag Cook 
Book, 217 

Shops and Houses, by Frank Swin- 
nerton, 226, 243 

Sixth Sense, The, by Stephen Mc- 
Kenna, 340, 345 

"Social Amenities" in "Soles Oc- 
cidere et Redire Possunt," 36 

Social Forces in Literature, by Dr. 
H. W. L. Dana, 300 

Some Things that Matter, by Lord 
Riddell, 303 

Somerset Maugham in Tahiti, ar- 
ticle, by Hector MacQuarrie, 
292 

"Song for a Little House," from 
The Rocking Horse by Christo- 
pher Morley, 348 

Sonia, by Stephen McKenna, 251, 
339, 340, 341. 342, 343, 346 

Sonia Married, by Stephen Mc- 
Kenna, 341, 342, 346 

Speare, Dorothy, 264; Dancers in 
the Dark, 255, 256 

Spellbinders, by Margaret Culkin 
Banning, 252 

Spindrift, by Milton Raison, 352; 
extracts from preface by Wil- 



liam McFee, 353; quotation 
from, 354 

Splendid Folly, The, by Margaret 
Pedler, 256 

Splendour by Numbers, Aldous 
Huxley, 36 

Splinters, by Keith Preston, 358; 
quotation from, 359 

Squire, J. C, Books in General, 
Third Series, 44; collected paro- 
dies, 98; editor of the London 
Mercury, 44; Life and Letters, 
46; on Anatole France, Jane 
Austen, Keats, Pope, Rabelais, 
Walt Whitman, 46; pen name 
(Solomon Eagle), 46; Poems: 
Second Series, 351; The Birds 
and Other Poems, 351 

Stag Cook Book, The, by C. M. 
Sheridan, 217 

Stevens, William O., see Allan 
Westcott, A History of Sea 
Power, 331 

Stevenson, Candace T., review of 
Olive Roberts Barton, 162 

Stevenson, Robert Louis, descrip- 
tion of Edinburgh, 86; in Mis- 
cellanies, by Lord Rosebery, 
123; Swinnerton, on, 242 

Stewart, Donald Ogden, A Parody 
Outline of History, 93, 94, 371; 
Perfect Behaviour, 93, 94 

Stickfuls, by Irvin S. Cobb, 169, 
185 

Struggle for Power in Europe 
(1917-21), by Leslie Haden Guest, 
323 

Sunny-San, by Onoto Watanna, 
253 

Sutherland, Jean, Beauty for 
Ashes, 262 

Swinnerton, Frank, Analyst of 
Lovers, 225; Arnold Bennett's 
Comments, 225; Coquette, 226, 
243; criticism of R. L. Steven- 
son, 242; list of books, 242, 
243; literary critic, 241; Noc- 
turne, 22$, 233, 235, 239, 243; 
On the Staircase, 226, 243; 
Personal Sketches by Arnold 
Bennett, Grant Overton, H. G. 
Wells, 243; publisher, 240; Sep- 
tember, 225, 226, 243; Shops 
and Houses, 226, 243; Sources 
on, 243; The Casement, 236, 
242; The Chaste Wife, 226, 243; 
The Happy Family, 226, 238, 
242; The Merry Heart, 236, 
242; The Three Lovers, 226, 
227, 233, 243; The Young Idea, 
238 



[382] 



INDEX 



Szvords, by Sidney Howard, 364; 
Kenneth Macgowan's criticism, 
364, 365 

Taggart, Marion Ames, 164; At 
Greenacres, 164; Poppy's Pluck, 
164; The Bottle Imp, 164; The 
Queer Little Man, 164 

Tahiti Days, by Hector McQuar- 
rie, 270 

Tales Told by the Gander, by- 
Maude Radford Warren, 153 

Talkers, The, by Robert W. Cham- 
bers, 317, 320 

Tarkington, Booth, box score, 183, 
184; study of, by Robert Cortes 
Holliday, 53 

Tell England, by Ernest Ray- 
mond, 250; Prologue, by Padre 
Monty, 250, 251 

Terhune, Albert Payson, Black 
Casar's Clan, 7 1 ; Black Gold, 
71; Further Adventures of Lad, 
215; home of, 214; Lad: A Dog, 
214. 

That Which Hath Wings, by Rich- 
ard Dehan (Clotilde Graves), 
200, 210 

They Have Only Themselves to 
Blame, 118 

Thirty-nine Steps, The, by John 
Buchan, 249 

This Marrying, by Margaret Cul- 
kin Banning, 253 

Three Crowns, The, by Winnifred 
Wells, 190 

Three Lovers, The, by Frank 
Swinnerton, 226, 227, 233, 243; 
Extracts from, 229, 243 

Three Men and a Maid, by P. G. 
Wodehouse, 99; extract from, 
99-101 

Three Soldiers, by John Dos Passos 

Tilden, William T., The Art of 
Lawn Tennis, 213; tennis cham- 
pion, 213 

Timothy Tubby's Journal, extracts 
from, 95, 96, 97, 98 

Tish, by Mary Roberts Rinehart, 
108, 115, n6 

Tomorrow We Diet, by Nina Wil- 
cox Putnam, 90 

''Touch of Tears, The," from 
Vigils, by Mrs. Kilmer, 350-351 

Trade Union Policy, by Dr. Leo 
Wolman, 299 

Translations from the Chinese, by 
Christopher Morley, 348; Quo- 
tation from, 349 

Trees and Other Poems, by Joyce 
Kilmer, 349 



Truth About an Author, The, by 
Arnold Bennett, 144, 150 

Turns About Town, by Robert 
Cortes Holliday. 52 

Twenty Years of Lawn Tennis, by 
A. Wallis Myers, 213 

Vanished Pomps of Yesterday. 
The, by Lord Frederic Hamil 
ton, 131 

Vanishing of Betty Varian, The 
by Carolyn Wells, 76, 77 

Van Loan, Charles E., Buck Par 
vin: Stories of the Motion Pic 
ture Game, 212; Fore! Golf 
Stories, 212; Old Man Curry 
Racetrack Stories, 212; Score by 
Innings: Baseball Stories, 212; 
Taking the Count: Prize Ring 
Stories, 212 

Van Rensselaer, Alexander, 220 
r bibliographies by, 223 

Van Vechten, Carl, New York 
Evening Post, review of Her- 
man Melville: Mariner and Mys 
tic, 325-328 

Vardon, Harry, The Gist of Golf 
213 

Vigils, by Mrs. Kilmer, 350; Quo 
tations from, 350, 351 

"Vision," from Spindrift, by Mil- 
ton Raison, 354 

Vital Message, The, by Sir Ar- 
thur Conan Doyle, 302 

Voice in the Wilderness, The, by 
Richard Blajter, 263 

Walking Stick Papers, by Robert 
Cortes Holliday, selection from, 
5*i 52 

Walpole, Hugh, 15, 27, 28, 29, 31, 
32; A Hugh Walpole Anthology, 
32; American following of, 21; 
appearance, 22; article on, by 
Mrs. Belloc Loundes, 23; birth- 
place, 15; Books of, 31; com- 
ments on The Bookman, 366; con- 
nection with London Standard, 
26; appreciation by Joseph 
Hergesheimer, 15, 29, 30, 31; 
courage of, 25; description by 
Arnold Bennett, 22; education 
of, 22; educational experiences 
of, 22; English Literature Dur- 
ing the Last Half Century, 32; 
father of, 15; Fortitude, 21; 
goes to England, 16; Hugh Wal- 
pole, an appreciation, 31; Hugh 
Walpole, Master Novelist, 32; 
life in New York, 16; London 



[383] 



INDEX 



scenes pictured by, in Anthology, 
28; Maradick at Forty, 26; Note 
by Joseph Conrad, 28; Novels, 
list of, 31; optimist, 23; Ro- 
mances, list of, 31; Service in 
Great War, 16; Selections for 
Anthology, 27; Short Stories, 
list of, 31; Sources on, 31; su- 
perstitions, 24; reader, 24; Tait 
Black Prize for best novel of 
year, 30; won by, 30; The Cap- 
tives, 24; The Cathedral, 19; 
The Dark Forest, 16; The Duch- 
ess of Wrexe, 19; The Gods and 
Mr. Perrin, 22; The Green Mir- 
ror, 19; The Wooden Horse, 
25; Visits to America, 16 

Wanderings of a Spiritualist, The, 
by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 302 

Warren, Maude Radford, Tales 
Told by the Gander, 153 

Watanna, Onoto (Mrs. Winnifred 
Reeve), 254; A Japanese Night- 
ingale, 254; Sunny-San, 253 

Warbasse, Dr. James B., Coopera- 
tive Movement, 300 

Weaver, Raymond M., Herman 
Melville: Mariner and Mystic, 
325, 326, 327, 328 

Wells, Carolyn (Mrs. Hadwin 
Houghton), 77; Book of Hu- 
morous Verse, 99; The Room 
■with the Tassels, 76; The Van- 
ishing of Betty Varian, 76, 77 

Wells, H. G., 94; Comments on 
Frank Swinnerton's Nocturne, 
233, 234, 235; Soviet Russia, 192 

Westcott, Peter, in Fortitude, by 
Hugh Walpole, 22 

West Broadzvay, by Nina Wil- 
cox Putnam, 88, 90 

Westerners, The, by Stewart Ed- 
ward White, 55, 63, 66 

West, Rebecca, books by, 86; ar- 
ticle by Amy Wellington, 83; 
artist, 78; biography of, 83; The 
Judge, 78; The Return of the 
Soldier, 86 

Westcott, Allan, and William O. 
Stevens, A History of Sea Pow- 
er, 331 

What Timmy Did, by Mrs. Belloc 
Lowndes, 77 

What to Eat and How to Prepare 
It, by Elizabeth A. Monaghan, 
218 

While I Remember, by Stephen 
McKenna, 324, 346 

Whispering Windows, see More 
Limehouse Nights, by Thomas 
Burke, 187, 188 



White, Albert C, The Irish Free 
State, 191 

White, Stewart Edward, 55, 56, 
59, 60, 61, 66; account of by 
Eugene F. Saxton, 61, 62, 63, 
64, 65; Appendix, to Gold, by 
Eugene F. Saxton, 67; The 
Birds of Mackinac Island, 55, 
63; boat and books, 56, 59; 
books of, 66; by John Palmer 
Gavit, 67; education of, 61; 
Gold, 61, 67; in France, 56; 
military service, 61; On Tip- 
toe: A Romance of the Red- 
woods, 59, 67; parents, 60; Sim- 
bo, 55, 67; sources on, 67; The 
Claim Jumpers, 55, 63, 66; The 
Land of Footprints, 55, 67; The 
Westerners, 55, 63, 66 

Wild Life in the Tree Tops, by 
Captain C. W. R. Knight, 214; 
Photographs, 214 

Wingfield-Stratford, Esme, Facing 
Reality, 300 

Wire Devils, The, by Frank L. 
Packard, 68 

With the Band, poem, by Robert 
W. Chambers, 317 

Wodehouse, Pelham Grenville, 70; 
lyrical writer, 99; Three Men 
and a Maid, 99 

Wolf, Robert, 297; The Creative 
Spirit in Industry, 300 

Wolman, Dr. Leo, Trade Union 
Policy, 299 

Woman of No Importance, A, 
Recollections and Reflections, 
129 

Women and the Labour Movement, 
by Alice Henry, 299 

Women Who Make Our Novels, 
The, by Grant Overton, 117; 
chapter on Mary Roberts Rine- 
hart, 109, 117 

Wonder Book, A, by Nathaniel 
Hawthorne, 165 

Wooden Horse, The, by Hugh 
Walpole, 25, 26, 31; sale of, 
25 

Workers' Bookshelf Series, 297 

Workers' Education Bureau of 
America, editorial board, 297 

Writing as a Business: A Prac- 
tical Guide for Authors, by Rob- 
ert Cortes Holliday, 220; Ex- 
tracts from, 222, 223 

Wylie, Elinor, 357 

Young, F. E. Mills, 263; Almonds 
of Life, 263; Imprudence, 263 
The Stronger Influence, 263 



[384] 



